‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ Documentary to Premiere at SXSW
Star Wars: The Force Awakens is the sun around which a vast galaxy of tie-ins revolve. The latest installment of the Star Wars franchise is only a piece of a much larger system of products and supplemental material, from the endless rollout of merchandising (that somehow excludes the main character of the film) to the various tidbits of trivia dropped during interviews that fans have hungrily gobbled up.
A new planet has now been discovered in the complex solar system of Stuff Tangentially Related To Star Wars: The Force Awakens in the form of a feature-length making-of documentary called Secrets of The Force Awakens: A Cinematic Journey. This peek behind the scenes will be bundled as an extra on the Blu-ray and DVD release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens on April 5, but SXSW attendees that can’t conceive of any other way to spend their finite time at the festival may catch it in Austin on March 14.
The official press release from Disney and Lucasfilm indicates that the documentary will include exclusive interviews with the actors and filmmakers, as well as previously unseen in-depth footage — pretty standard for a making-of doc. The mind reels to imagine what will make this particular project different from all the similarly intentioned documentaries. In an ideal world, we’ll get a Hearts of Darkness-styled chronicle of director J.J. Abrams’ slow descent into madness.
It practically writes itself: “We were on Tattooine, there were too many of us, we had access to too much money, too much equipment, and little by little we went insane. Plus, craft services sucked. I mean, dried-up ham finger sandwiches? This is a Star Wars production, for the love of god. Lucasfilm couldn’t spring for mini-quiches?”