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Whatever screenwriter Michael Arndt comes up with for Star Wars: Episode VII, he'll be hard-pressed to make it as entertaining as the heaps of twists and turns that the rumor mill has already given us. To wit: J.J. Abrams, who was once rumored as a potential director for the movie before he publicly dismissed those reports by saying he'd rather be in the audience, is now apparently directing after all.

Whew. We just dodged a $852 quadrillion bullet. The White House has posted a response (yes, it’s real) on its web site to a petition asking that the federal government “[s]ecure resources and funding, and begin construction of a Death Star by 2016.” The petition, which garnered nearly 35,000 signatures, was posted on the White House petition site in November. The short answer? No.

ABC entertainment president Paul Lee says he's going to take a look at the long-gestating Star Wars live-action TV series now that the Disney deal to acquire Lucasfilm is complete. "We'd love to do something with Lucasfilm, we're not sure what yet," Lee exclusively told EW. "We haven't even sat down with them. We're going to look at [the live-action series], we're going to look at all of them, and see what's right. We weren't able to discuss this with them until [the acquisition] closed and it just closed. It's definitely going to be part of the conversation."

"It was originally a 12-part saga," Pollock added, hinting that "The three most exciting stories were 7, 8 and 9. They had propulsive action, really interesting new worlds, new characters. I remember thinking, ‘I want to see these 3 movies.’" And as for whether or not Disney would even be interested in Lucas' plans for the franchise, Pollock insisted, "Writers will absolutely take his outline. That’s in part what Disney bought."

Naysayers would have you believe Disney's purchase of Lucasfilm can only mean one thing: Bambi and Mickey Mouse are sure to appear in future "Star Wars" movies taking up lightsabers against the dark side of the Force....

Well, this is unexpected: In a deal worth a reported $4 billion in stocks and cash, George Lucas has handed the keys to his Star Wars kingdom over to Disney. Saying that "Lucasfilm reflects the extraordinary passion, vision, and storytelling of its founder, George Lucas," the understandably enthused Disney CEO, Bob Iger, heralded an acquisition that "combines a world-class portfolio of content including Star Wars, one of the greatest family entertainment franchises of all time, with Disney's unique and unparalleled creativity across multiple platforms, businesses, and markets to generate sustained growth and drive significant long-term value."

We’ve yet to even see the machines that will most likely play this game, but Lucasarts has just given us the first public gameplay trailer from its upcoming mature-themed Star Wars 1313. It’s doing a pretty good job justifying the likelihood of next-gen hardware, because this trailer is looking very, very good.

Filmmaker George Lucas on Friday named veteran producer Kathleen Kennedy as his co-chair and successor at the iconic film studio he founded four decades ago. Kennedy and Lucas will serve as board co-chairs at Lucasfilm Ltd. as the "Star Wars" creator moves forward with his retirement plans.

Attention Star Wars junkies who've always longed for the day when transmitting holographic messages is as commonplace as a la Princess Leia's "Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi, you're my only hope." Your day is nigh. At a recent tech forum, Microsoft Research unveiled a prototype of an augmented reality application called Holoflector.

The more astronomers look for other worlds, the more they find that it's a crowded and crazy cosmos. They think planets easily outnumber stars in our galaxy and they're even finding them in the strangest of places... "We're finding an exciting potpourri of things we didn't even think could exist," said Harvard University astronomer Lisa Kaltenegger, including planets that mirror "Star Wars" Luke Skywalker's home planet with twin suns and a mini-star system with a dwarf sun and shrunken planets.