Diego Luna, from Elysium, Cast in Rogue One

According to the fine people at Variety, yet another lead in Rogue One has been cast, and it's Diego Luna from Elysium, Milk, The Terminal, and Y Tu Mama Tambien. While no other details have been offered on how Luna might be playing, it's really great to see another diverse cast member joining our favorite galaxy far, far away.

And look at that face. That face screams "dashing rogue." I mean, if there's one thing this film obviously needs, it's a dashing rogue.

Josh Trank Leaves Star Wars Anthology

Josh Trank, the director of Chronicle and the new Fantastic Four film, has departed his upcoming Star Wars Anthology film. The film was meant to be the next standalone Star Wars film after Rogue One, but no other details are known about the project - at times it's been rumored to be an origin story for Boba Fett, or a Princess Leia film, but now that Rogue One is revealed to be none of the things it was rumored to be, all of those bets are off the table. No real word was given as to why Trank left, except that he wanted to pursue his own original creative works. It's entirely possible that he was simply burnt out after making Fantastic Four and going straight into another major blockbuster. His full statement, and Lucasfilm's response, after the jump.

Episode 147: Celebrate Star Wars!

This week, Kevin Custer joins Mike and Jarys to break down Star Wars Celebration! We'll discuss the new Jurassic World trailer, and then go straight into what we saw at the convention, including Rogue One, a breakdown of the brand new Force Awakens trailer, whether Palpatine is pure evil or has more depth than that, and end with a spirited debate on whether Jar Jar Binks is responsible for the destruction of the Second Death Star!

Episode 147!

Star Wars Celebration Day 4: Rogue One Awakens

The final day of Star Wars Celebration was short, but booooy was it sweet. We learned more than we ever thought we would about the first Star Wars Anthology film, Rogue One, we saw the props from The Force Awakens, and we learned about next year's Celebration for the first time. Spoilers abound from this point on.

Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation Teaser Trailer Teaser!

That's not a typo...this is a teaser trailer for a teaser trailer. Just so we're clear - not a full trailer.

And given the fact that this badass thing would be totally acceptable as a full trailer, begs the question: What in the heck is the actual trailer going to look like? Hit the jump to see Tom Cruise, Simon Pegg, and Jeremy Renner back in action one more time.

Star Wars Reveals Titles, Crew for Two New Movies!

StarWars.com released a ton of new details from a Lucasfilm shareholder meeting, and a lot of it is good! The first piece is a confirmation of something we reported way back when, that Rian Johnson will be writing and directing Episode VIII. This is fantastic news - Johnson's three films have ranged from good (Brothers Bloom) to great (Looper, Brick), and his episodes of Breaking Bad were some of the best in that show's run. We can't wait to see what he does with Star Wars.

The other piece of news concerns the title for Felicity Jones starring Star Wars standalone, directed by Gareth Edwards (Godzilla) and written by Oscar nominee Chris Weitz (About a Boy, Cinderella). The film is entitled "Rogue One," and was developed based on an idea that John Knoll, Chief Creative Officer at ILM, had. If that name doesn't excite you, let me explain why it should: Rogue One is the callsign for the leader of Rogue Squadron, the X-wing pilots that heroically led the charge for the Rebel Alliance and were immortalized in the series of X-wing: Rogue Squadron books. The books are no longer canon, but a film all about X-wing fighters could be amazing. And while she's not confirmed to be playing Rogue One, a film about a female leader of a group of X-wing pilots would be friggin' gold.

Also announced were the release dates for the films:

Star Wars: Rogue One: December 16 2016
Star Wars VIII: May 26 2017

The Roguelite Renaissance

In the beginning, there was Rogue, written circa 1980 by a couple of UC students messing around on the school's mainframe after hours.  Rogue was not the first dungeon-crawling video game to be inspired by D&D, but it became an instant classic in large part because of its core innovation:

One of the things we wanted to do was create a game we could enjoy playing ourselves. Most of the existing adventure-type games had "canned" adventures -- they were exactly the same every time you played, and of course the programmers had to invent all of the puzzles, and therefore would always know how to beat the game. We decided that with Rogue, the program itself should "build the dungeon", giving you a new adventure every time you played, and making it possible for even the creators to be surprised by the game.

 -- Glenn R. Wichman, Rogue developer

Rogue soon spawned Hack, which spawned Nethack (still being maintained after almost thirty years), as well as a host of other games that are to this day called "roguelikes".  The key features inherited from Rogue that mark a game as "roguelike" (defined at the International Roguelike Development Conference) are:

* Randomly generated tile-based levels
* Randomly generated items with unknown properties
* Turn-based movement and combat
* Permadeath