Names and faces
Carrie Fisher is not done with Star
Wars after all — Lucasfilm says unreleased footage of the actress will be used in the next installment of the Star Wars saga to draw her character’s story to an end. The studio and writer-director J.J. Abrams announced Friday that footage of Fisher shot for 2015’s Star Wars: The
Force Awakens will be used in the ninth film in the space opera’s core trilogies about the Skywalker family that includes Fisher’s character, Leia. Mark Hamill, who plays Luke Skywalker, also will appear in the film, which for the moment is simply called Episode IX. It is scheduled to be released in December 2019. Fisher died in December 2016 after she finished work on the middle installment in the trilogy, The Last Jedi. “We desperately loved Carrie Fisher,” Abrams said in a statement. “Finding a truly satisfying conclusion to the Skywalker saga without her eluded us.” He said recasting Fisher or recreating her using computer graphics, as was done in a spinoff film Rogue One, was not an option. “With the support and blessing from her daughter, Billie, we have found a way to honor Carrie’s legacy and role as Leia in Episode IX by using unseen footage we shot together in Episode VII.”
Bobby Brown says he made some bad choices in his life but denied that his marriage to Whitney Houston ever turned violent, a reversal of a past admission. Brown, speaking with reporters Friday about BET’s new miniseries The Bobby Brown Story, said such allegations involving his late ex-wife were “completely wrong.” But in a 2016 interview with ABC’s Robin Roberts, Brown said he once hit Houston. He also told Roberts he is not “a violent man” and that descriptions of him as a “woman beater” are lies. Brown appeared Friday at a Television Critics Association annual meeting at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, where Houston drowned in a bathtub in 2012. Coroner’s officials ruled the death accidental and said heart disease and cocaine were contributing factors. Brown said he still deals with the deaths of Houston and their daughter Bobbi Kristina Brown “every day.” During a question-and-answer session, the New Edition founding member was asked about his relationship with Houston in light of his plan to build an Atlanta domestic-violence shelter to honor Bobbi Kristina, who died at age 22 in 2015. She, like Houston, was found in a bathtub. When Brown was asked about news reports and court records involving a 911 domestic-violence call Houston made in 2003, he replied, “The public record is wrong.” Atlanta-area police said at the time that Brown hit his wife, leaving her with a bruised cheek and a cut inside her lip.