'Star Trek Beyond' trailer to screen before 'Star Wars: The Force Awakens'

It's nice to have this officially confirmed. I was on Star Trek Beyond for most of this year, and I am very excited to see how the trailer looks on the big screen seven months in advance. Hopefully we have reached the point now where Abrams has helped unite Star Wars and Star Trek fans in space opera fandom, after so many years of exclusionary mockery ("the dark times").

"Little Miss Star Wars" makes BuzzFeed's List of "30 Very Best Pieces of Fan Art of 2013"

@THEJoshLange Just saw your Star Wars/Little Miss Sunshine mash up piece in a Buzzfeed article. Absolutely loved it. Best piece featured.
— Nick Keutzer (@Nick09) December 11, 2013

Thanks for the heads-up Nick! The fan art on the BuzzFeed list is amazing, and I am grateful to be a part of such a great list. Thank you to everyone that liked and reblogged the piece over the course of the year. If you have not seen the Star Wars piece yet, here is the link to my original post.

Interview with Influx Magazine

Recently I was asked by my longtime friend, fellow Vancouver Film School grad, and producer-director-film critic (he does it all, folks) Paul Booth to do an interview with him for the online film site Influx Magazine. I've included a link to the full article at the bottom.

"Josh Lange has worked on some very impressive video games and he’s been part of some amazing studio pictures. For me, it’s Josh’s integrity and consummate professionalism that made him an ideal candidate for this series. Josh also has a respect for movies of the past and present before Star Wars or the prequel trilogy. We live in a time of cinema, where many people don’t respect the past. Josh knows his stuff.

Paul Booth: What films or life event made you want to make movies? Past just loving movies?

Josh Lange: The worlds and characters of the original Star Wars films triggered an intense fascination and passion in me early on when I was a kid. As my connection to those movies evolved, I began to learn about the methods developed by George Lucas and his visual effects crew to make their groundbreaking special effects. Since the visual effects were what really made those movie stand out, I started looking at other filmmakers with high standards for the field, such as Stanley Kubrick. I was also in love with the films of Walt Disney as a kid, and as my interests began bouncing between art, animation, movies, and visual effects, I started making small films and taking film courses through the local community college while I was in high school. Senior year I was officially hooked, and it was only a matter of time before I entered film school."

Link to the full article on Influx Magazine.com

Star Wars: Episode VII/Star Trek mashup movie posters

I’ve made two new Star Wars Episode 7 mashup movie posters, done in the same spirit as my last Star Wars/Little Miss Sunshine mashup poster. This time they’re a riff off this Star Trek: Into Darkness poster, since that director J.J. Abrams has been announced to also direct Episode 7:

One of the fun things about making Episode 7 fan art is sitting back and coming up with scenarios that might theoretically occur in the new sequels. There are many unanswered questions for them to address, such as which principle characters will drive the plot, which locations will be used, and which “wow” moments will be created. I tried illustrating two very different directions for these mashups, both involving the silhouette of the Rebel Alliance logo replacing the Star Fleet insignia from Star Trek.

For this first poster, I went to the Star Wars canon from the novels, where Luke Skywalker, now a Jedi Master, returns to planet Yavin IV with R2D2 to set up the new Jedi order at the Massassi temple. I’m fairly certain the Jedi order will begin to be remade in Episode 7, and will continue to grow throughout the new trilogy.

The second mashup features an unknown Jedi padawan, surveying a battle-ravaged Coruscant, where massive fleets of Mon Calamari and Imperial Star Destroyers wage war above the planet’s smoking skyline. I have faith that Coruscant will play a big role in the new films, since it was the home base for the Empire before expanding to the Outer Rim in the original trilogy, and the Rebel Alliance cannot rule with confidence unless they control the city planet. Time will tell if any of these ideas are proven correct.

See also: Boba Fett Episode VII Facebook cover image

Star Wars Episode VII Mashup Poster

Here's a mashup poster I made of Star Wars Episode 7 and Little Miss Sunshine, two movies written by screenwriter Michael Arndt. When he was announced as the Episode 7 screenwriter, the poster idea popped into my head and it wouldn't go away.

The moment I tried to capture was the main characters getting ready to hop into the Millenium Falcon and head out into the next movie (of course, the story for Ep VII will most likely not have them all in it, but I picked them in the absence of any real story details). I wanted to stay as true to the iconic LMS poster as I could, and adjusted the Millienium Falcon's dimensions to better match the VW van. Picking which character would replace which was fun, and certain subtleties were serendipitous, like the similarity of vests between the characters of Alan Arkin and Harrison Ford. Although I included official logos and crew names at the bottom for a more realistic touch, this is of course just fan art and was not made for commercial purposes.

Shout-out to the guys at 8-Bit Cubist for their helpful feedback as I worked on it.

For those who dig it, here are some desktop background versions:

1680 x 1050 (widescreen)

1600 x 1200

For those who liked it, be sure to also check out my Boba Fett Episode VII Facebook cover photo.

Episode VII banner

With the news this week of George Lucas selling his Lucasfilm company and properties to Disney, I thought it would be fun to mash-up a little banner for the new Star Wars trilogy arriving in 2015.