Some goofy burglar in the San Jose area appears to be on a mission to steal Disney items — and Disney items only — off local lawns, and some families say their lawns have been looted of more than $1,000 worth of Disney lawn ornaments.

The holiday season is obviously a season for porch pirates stealing things, a scrooge-y scourge that unfortunately turns up every year. And we’ve seen a few particularly brazen holiday heists, like someone stealing SF’s giant Washington Square Park menorah about ten years back, or the infamous French Laundry wine bottle robbery of 2014.  

But some shaggy dog in San Jose is a particularly maleficent Christmas thief. NBC Bay Area, KRON4, and KPIX are all on the case of someone who is stealing specifically only Disney Christmas lawn ornaments off San Jose lawns. All three stations spoke to parents Amanda and Nathan Steele, who had an estimated $1,200 worth of Mickey and Minnie Mouse, Eeyore, and Dumbo lawn decorations stolen from their lawn.

“No other decorations Raj, just Disney decorations,” NBC Bay Area correspondent Jocelyn Moran told anchor Raj Mathai during that station’s report.

And as the wronged mom Amanda Steele told KPIX, “They only took our Disney stuff, we had six Disney items.”

“We just got Dumbo that night, just put it together, that was our new one of the year,” father Nathan Steele told the same station. “And it got stolen that night.”

But the Steeles weren’t the only ones in the very same San Jose neighborhood to have Disney holiday decorations — and only Disney holiday decorations — stolen from their lawns. “Between Nextdoor and the Ring neighborhood app, I have counted at least seven more people,” Amanda Steele told NBC Bay Area.

The tragedy is that this has shrunk the kids’ ability to enjoy the holidays, as other families had come by nightly to take pictures with the Disney decor. Though security camera footage, like that seen above in the KRON4 segment, indicates that this may be the same grey sedan used in a similar rash of Disney holiday ornament thefts from seven years ago.  

The Steeles know they may have a better chance of finding Nemo than finding this thief, and the San Jose Police Department says they do not have a suspect. But Nathan Steele warns others in his comments to KRON4 “If you do have Disney stuff, he’s coming for you.”

Anyone with information is asked to contact the San Jose Police Department at (408) 277-8900.

Related: Four Nabbed for Stealing Halloween Decorations in El Cerrito [SFist]

Image: PARIS, FRANCE - NOVEMBER 20: In this handout provided by Disneyland Paris, a general view of Christmas decoration during "Le Noel Enchante Disney - The Enchanted Christmas" at Disneyland Paris on November 20, 2021 in Paris, France. (Photo by Handout/Getty Images)

• Following recent deaths and multiple rescues, San Francisco officials are urging visitors to avoid entering the water at Ocean Beach this Memorial Day weekend. Instead, how about heading to the much more gentle bay side of the water, such as Aquatic Park or Crane Cove Park. [KQED]
• About 20 Stanford students are on the 11th day of a hunger strike, demanding the university cut ties with companies linked to Israel’s actions in Gaza. Protesters also want looser protest rules, dropped charges, and a stronger stance from school leaders. [SFGate]
• YouTube has hired longtime Disney executive Justin Connolly as its global head of media and sports, prompting Disney to sue YouTube for breach of contract and interference, seeking to block the appointment. [Bloomberg]
• A San Francisco boy with a rare bone marrow disease has been on the donor waitlist for over a year, facing challenges finding a match due to his Chinese and Vietnamese heritage. [NBC Bay Area]

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• The Southern California portion of Pacific Coast Highway reopened Friday morning for the first time since the January Palisades Fire, restoring a key route between Malibu and Pacific Palisades. [Chronicle]
• Just an adorable family of three enjoying their beers at the Giants game. [@SFGiantsFaithful]

National:

• At least 12 people were injured, including three critically, in a stabbing attack at a Hamburg train station, where a 39-year-old woman suspect was arrested. Authorities say she likely acted alone and may have been in mental distress. [ABC7]
• Boeing has reached a $1.1 billion deal with the Justice Department to avoid prosecution over two deadly 737 Max crashes in 2018 and 2019 that killed 346 people. While the agreement includes $445 million in victim compensation and safety reforms, families who have spent years demanding a public trial and harsher accountability strongly oppose the deal. [CBS News]
• More than 100 National Security Council staffers — including both career officials and Trump-era political appointees — were abruptly placed on administrative leave Friday after an email from NSC chief of staff Brian McCormack gave them 30 minutes to clear out their desks as part of a controversial restructuring led by interim adviser Marco Rubio. [Yahoo News]
• NOAA predicts an above-average Atlantic hurricane season beginning June 1, with 13–19 named storms and up to five major hurricanes, driven by unusually warm ocean temperatures and intensified monsoon activity. [NBC News]

Video of the Day:

• Watch rare footage from Sesame Street’s first-ever national tour with a stop in Golden Gate Park where Big Bird and the gang performed for 15,000 fans in what was called a “Preschooler’s Woodstock.”

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Still Making Weekend Plans?

In case you missed it, SFist let you know about the Chinatown Pride event as well as Saturday’s line-up at Yerba Buena Gardens. Here are a couple more big events happening this weekend.

• Carnaval San Francisco, Afro Mundo: Celebrate the African diaspora in the Americas with a weekend of music, dance, and food. Saturday–Sunday, May 24–25 | 11 AM–6 PM | Mission District, SF | Free
• SF Queer Art & Music Festival: Nine-day celebration across the Tenderloin featuring DJs, drag, and visual art. May 23–31 | Various venues, SF
• Crucial Reggae Sundays: Relax with live reggae music in Golden Gate Park's Music Concourse. Sunday, May 25 | 4:20–7:30 PM | Golden Gate Park, SF | Free

Image: Aquatic Park; Leanne Maxwell/SFist

• It was reported earlier this week that Newsom mailed out prepaid cellphones programmed with his phone number to about 100 California tech executives. The phones came with handwritten notes that read, “If you ever need anything, I’m a phone call away.” [Politico]
• State Attorney General Rob Bonta filed a lawsuit along with 20 other states to halt the dismantling of the Department of Education last week. The lawsuit is one of several that Bonta has filed in the first nine weeks of his administration. [NBC Bay Area]
• Russian River Brewing is launching its Pliny the Younger 2025 release at its Santa Rosa and Windsor pubs today through April 3. The highly coveted beer already made the rounds in San Francisco last month. [ABC7]
• In spite of record profits, PG&E is requesting its seventh rate hike in a year to protect investors from future “climate risks,” which means customer rates would go up by about $5.50 a month starting next year. [NBC Bay Area]
• Video game workers from across the US and Canada have formed a union, United Video Workers, in partnership with the American Federation of Musicians, which was announced on Wednesday at the Game Developers Conference being held in San Francisco. [UVW-CWA]

National:

• Musk-funded America PAC announced on X that it’s offering $100 to Wisconsin voters to sign a petition opposing “activist judges” ahead of a pivotal state Supreme Court election on April 1. They’re also offering $100 for referring others to sign the petition. [AP]
• Disney shareholders overwhelmingly voted against a proposal by right-wing think tank National Center for Public Policy Research that the company end its participation in the Human Rights Campaign’s index that rates companies’ levels of support for LGBTQ-friendly workplace policies and practices. Only 1% voted in favor of the proposal, which was especially focused on erasing trans rights. [Variety]
• A new US task force is projected to start using terror laws to prosecute university students protesting the war in Gaza by connecting free speech to propaganda. [Guardian]
• In spite of his current policy to end the US refugee resettlement program, Trump is reportedly offering white South Africans refugee status to the US who are “victims of racial discrimination by their Black-led government.” [Marin Independent Journal]

Video of the Day:

• Flashback to the ‘80s with glimpses of the Embarcadero Freeway.

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Image: Leanne Maxwell/SFist

A pair of brothers up in Napa have constructed a rollercoaster in their backyard, which one person can ride at a time, styled like Disneyland's Matterhorn, complete with abominable snow monster.

The pandemic has driven some people into quiet, depressed holes of their own. But it's also driven some people into big, industrious projects. And the LaRochelle brothers took on one such project in their backyard.

"My brother walked outside with me to the backyard, and he said 'Michael, we are going to build the Matterhorn,'" says Michael LaRochelle, speaking to ABC 7.

They're calling it "Matterhorn: Alpine Escape," and they revealed the finished product on YouTube and Reddit in November. It was actually another backyard rollercoaster the brothers saw on YouTube, via their friend John Eggers, that served as inspiration. (According to the Reddit post, one of the brothers is currently an architecture student.)

This mini-Matterhorn includes a scary-looking dip under a wooden bridge, as well as a waterfall and a fountain. Sean and Michael LaRochelle say they spent a lot of time at Disneyland as kids, and this was a way to bring Disneyland to their own home.

It took four months to build, using 400 feet of steel track, and 32,000 pounds of stucco to create the mountain-esque exterior.

As for the scary snow monster, who they're calling "the Yeti," that was a last-minute addition. "Eventually I just thought, if we're going to all this trouble, we might as well have the Yeti," Michael says.

The project has led to a YouTube channel called Magictecture, which seems to suggest more project ahead.

Towards the middle of Moana, Disney's latest non-Pixar animated release, the demi-god Maui calls the heroine "princess." Moana corrects him, telling him she's not a princess, she's the daughter of the chief.

"You're wearing a dress and you have an animal sidekick. You're a princess," replies Maui.

He has a point.

Granted, the dress she wears doesn't sparkle in any way, and her animal sidekick is a mentally challenged chicken that doesn't talk, but in many ways she resemble a Disney princess: she's beautiful, with long flowing hair; she's rebellious; and while she may not be "royalty," she's heir to the top position in her village. (Some say chief, others say princess.)

So, yes. Disney could be accused of creating just another Disney princess. But it's Moana's differences from those previous princesses that are key.

For one, she's not white. Yes, Disney has given us Princesses of Color in the past, but let's face it, the majority of them have been alt-right approved. (Not to mention that the most popular animated Disney movie of all time, Frozen, was so white, I'm surprised you could even see the princesses against all that snow.)

For another, there is no love interest. There's no prince destined for Moana's hand, and while she does spend the majority of the movie with a beefy demi-god, their relationship is strictly platonic. Her reward is a successful quest, not a happily-wedded-after.

Moana is steeped in cultural folklore, mainly from the South Pacific islands, and is set during the time when those Polynesian natives were the explorers and settlers, long before the west arrived. The movie opens with a grandmother telling a group of children about Maui, the demi-god who created the islands, in a nice bit of animation that resembles Polynesian tattoos. (Maui's animated tattoos become a running gag later on in the movie as well.)

Moana (Auli'i Cravalho, a Hawaiian native making her screen debut) lives on the island of Motunui, where ever since she was a (really, really cute) baby, she's been drawn to the sea. Her father, Chief Tui Waialiki (Temuera Morrison), is convinced any attempts to venture past the island's reef will be met with doom.

But as their island begins to lose its fish and its crops, Moana believes their only hope is to leave the island, and, following the lead of her grandmother's stories, find Maui and force him to return the stolen heart of Te Fiti. It makes a little more sense in the movie, though really, it's just a story device to get Moana and Maui together.

And once they are together, the film hits its stride. The Rock gives Maui just the right amount of bravado —: he's a jerk, but a lovable one. Because this is not a Pixar movie, it means the movie breaks for songs, and even Maui gets one, the amusing and pretty catchy You're Welcome, which, along with the rest of the film's songs, has lyrics written by Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda.

Of course, Moana gets a ballad as well (How Far I'll Go), but I'm not sure it's going to become a song parents learn to hate as much as Let It Go, mainly because I don't think it's going to be as big of a hit, regardless of the presence of that word "go" in there. (A better song comes care of Jemaine Clement, who makes an appearance as a Bowie-esque giant crab in love with Shiny things.)

The majority of the movie follows Moana and Maui on their ocean voyage, as Moana learns to become an ocean navigator, on the way to saving the world. And refreshingly, once Maui gets past the princess jokes, he learns to treat her as an equal, and not as a helpless maiden.

In fact, there's not a lot that's girly about Moana. On every step of her journey, her gender is never an impediment, and is rarely brought into play. Now, I don't know if that's because the movie was written by eight people, only one of whom is a woman, or because it was directed by four dudes, or if it was actually by conscious design. And it doesn't really matter. By giving us a heroine that acts the way heroes always have, perhaps Disney has finally given us a "princess" movie that can cross that mythical gender divide.

At least in the case of two high-profile suitors that briefly explored the possibility of acquiring Twitter, it was the platform's infamous culture of bullying, trolls, and generally aggressive idiocy that turned them off in the end. One of those suitors would be Disney, which as Bloomberg now reports via insiders familiar with the talks, decided its family-friendly brand probably shouldn't be associated with a social media network most famous lately as being a "honeypot for a**holes" and a haven for abuse.

Per Bloomberg, "Disney’s discomfort with abuse on the site indicates that it’s a larger problem for Twitter’s business prospects than its executives imagined." That kind of begs the question: Do Twitter executives even use Twitter?

The last of the company's big prospects for an immediate sale, Salesforce, also walked away from a deal last week, with CEO Mark Benioff saying, "It wasn’t the right fit for us," noting that both the price (a reported $12 billion at a minimum) and the "culture" did not work for them. CNBC's Jim Cramer subsequently reported that trolls were an issue for Salesforce too, saying, "a lot of the bidders are looking at people with lots of followers and seeing the hatred."

Abuse, and Twitter's historic lack of ability or willingness to regulate against it, have been front and center in press pieces about the platform this year, particularly after the high-profile case of Ghostbusters star Leslie Jones — which seems to have led directly to the unprecedented banning of conservative troll Milo Yiannopoulos. At the time, citing Twitter's up-to-that-point free speech free-for-all, Yiannopoulos said, "This is the beginning of the end for Twitter," implying that the freedom to mock and bully whomever, however one pleased, was one of the only good things Twitter still had going for it.

But as a forum for public conversation, particularly since it allows people to start multiple accounts and use fake names, Twitter has become an increasingly ugly, cacophonous place to hang one's internet hat, and one that rewards the loudest, most petulant, and thick-skinned — though thin-skinned Donald Trump still seems to enjoy it. As more photo-based platforms like SnapChat and Instagram continue to grow their user bases, Twitter has been seeming more and more like the biggest shout-chamber of the social media world — and if you, like Trump, enjoy waking up each day looking for someone to fight with, just be active on Twitter for a few weeks and the fights will arrive organically.

Twitter's viability as a company continues to be questioned, too, and Disney executives and investors allegedly balked at the $12 billion valuation given that the company is still not profitable. Also, a lawsuit from an investor in September alleges that Twitter executives lied about the company's prospects for user growth causing its stock price to soar to an April 2015 high of $52.87 per share. Subsequent lack of real growth caused the stock to plummet, and its stock price today is $16.96.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, who sits on Disney's board, may be perfectly pleased with this outcome however. As many pundits have noted, Dorsey was deferring to his own board in retaining an investment firm to explore a sale, but he is not in any hurry to sell the company himself. According to Bloomberg, Dorsey thinks that "more time [will] prove that a new live-video streaming strategy can help increase user growth."

Previously: Now Disney's Talking About Buying Netflix, Which Would Be Good For Both Of Them
Microsoft And Disney Floated As Suitors In Twitter Sale, Which Could Be Imminent

The latest merger rumor, first floated Friday and continuing into Monday, is that Disney is in discussions to possibly buy Netflix outright, in a deal that would provide the media giant with its first solid streaming platform — though it already owns a 30 percent stake in Hulu, which it would likely have to give up if this deal went through. MarketWatch has the report, though they have no comment from either company to confirm or deny. And this deal comes just a week after the rumor was that Disney was looking into the possibility of a Twitter purchase as well.

Shares of Netflix bumped up 6 percent since Monday on the rumor, and the company's stock has otherwise been slipping a bit this year as their subscriber growth has slowed.

Consumerist notes that at least one market analyst, William Power of R.W. Baird, told clients recently that while Netflix has been the subject of "recent [mergers and acquisitions] rumors," it's too soon to say whether it could be Apple, Disney, or some other major suitor who will snap them up.

And while Disney did $2 billion at the box so far this year, movies aren't the company's biggest money maker anymore — that's cable TV. As parent company to networks ESPN, A&E, Lifetime, as well as ABC and ABC Family, they'd have much to gain from owning their own streaming platform, particularly in the realm of live sports, as Market Watch points out. And as of 2012, they already struck a deal to let Netflix be the exclusive streaming platform for Disney films and content, a deal that took effect just this year.

But, buying Netflix would be a major thing for Disney financially. As Fortune explains, Disney may have a market cap of $150 billion, but Netflix is valued at $45 billion and Disney would probably have to shoot above that price to get them to agree. It could be worth it, though, because it "would put to rest the whispers about Disney’s future in one fell swoop."

And it makes great sense for Netflix, too, which has been struggling with a $6 billion annual production budget for new content.

The Twitter deal, which could possibly occur in the next month, remains an open question, but chances are the semi-struggling company will become a new asset for Microsoft, or maybe Salesforce.

In summary, it's that time of year/boom cycle, when the big guys start swallowing up the less big guys.

Stay tuned.

Previously: Microsoft And Disney Floated As Suitors In Twitter Sale, Which Could Be Imminent

#Twitter #Disney pic.twitter.com/SjUSPHyzHq

— Wissem (@Wissem_Rassas) September 26, 2016

Late last week we heard that Twitter was starting to receive buyout bids from several tech companies, including Salesforce and Google, and as of today we're learning that two more top contenders for an acquisition deal are Microsoft and possibly Disney. Citing an unnamed source with apparent knowledge of the discussions, CNBC reports that a deal could be struck within 30 to 45 days. As a result, Twitter stock price continues to rise as it began doing sharply last Thursday, trading at $23.25 per share late Monday up from about $18.50 last week.

Bloomberg first reported the Disney news Monday, noting that Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is on the board of Disney and saying that multiple people familiar with the discussion report that "Walt Disney Co. is working with a financial adviser to evaluate a possible bid for Twitter Inc." TechCrunch independently verified this as well.

Also, apparently, Salesforce has been working with Bank of America to prepare a formal bid, and as we learned last week Salesforce's "chief digital evangelist" Vala Afshar is pretty in love with the idea.

Microsoft may be stepping in, however, after already beating out Salesforce to acquire LinkedIn earlier this year. And Facebook, which has long been Twitter's primary competitor, is unlikely to be putting in a bid, despite the fact that the company still needs help with disseminating real-time news.

Forbes notes that Twitter's live streaming deals with the NFL and NBA are likely attractive to Disney, but as Recode discussed earlier this month, while an acquisition of Twitter might be highly attractive to an Old Media company like Disney, it comes with a pretty steep price tag for media companies, likely north of $18 billion.

The Verge explains that Disney likely has a strong interest investing in a new media property like Twitter and keeping it out of the hands of competitors, particularly as its cable TV business — the biggest piece of the company — with properties like ABC and ESPN are losing younger viewers to YouTube and the internet in general. With that in mind, Disney has already invested in properties like Hulu and Vice Media.

Recode reiterates today, however, that Disney is an unlikely buyer, and that looking into a bid is probably as far as this is going to go for them. Speaking to Disney CEO Bob Igor's friendship with Jack Dorsey, the site quips, "If you’re going to spend $18 billion, $20 billion, $30 billion on something, you need a little bit more than 'I like the dude who runs the company.'"

Previously: Twitter Likely About To Get Bought, Maybe By Google Or Salesforce

Imagine a world filled with only geniuses, inventors, dreamers, and thinkers, who are allowed to be awesome and fulfill their potential without the constraints of societal laws or expectations. That is the world of Tomorrowland.

Now tell me: Who picks up their trash, does their laundry, builds their elevated highways, and makes their lattes? Oh right. They're all geniuses! I'm sure they'll figure it out.

Director Brad Bird has been accused of objectivism before, and he's denied there are Ayn Rand-inspired themes in his work. While one can definitely read some Randian influence into both The Incredibles and Ratatouille, (some people — and rats — are just better than others!), the films were charming, entertaining, and filled with enough heart that I could give it a pass. But Tomorrowland is such a meandering, cold, and bloated mess that you just can't escape its theme this time.

As a huge Disneyland fan, the opening of the movie had me filled with hope. Well, actually it's the second opening of the film. The first opening has George Clooney (Frank Walker) talking directly to the audience and then arguing with his costar (Britt Robertson), something that happens a few more times through the course of the film, and is absolutely unnecessary. In the second opening we see Clooney's character as a kid at the 1964 World's Fair, entering a jet pack into an inventions contest. While rebuffed by the contest judge (Hugh Laurie), a girl who appears to be Laurie's daughter (Raffey Cassidy, who gives the best performance in the film), takes a liking to young Frank, gives him a pin with a "T" on it, and has him follow her onto the It's a Small World ride.

I'll give the film this much: it understands Disneyland fandom. After all, It's a Small World really is right next door to Tomorrowland, and what little boy hasn't been forced to ride it hoping the entire time that the bottom would drop out and his boat would get to travel to a much cooler part of the park? That's basically what happens to Frank, as that magic pin gets him whisked away into a gleaming 1960's retro-future world filled with robots, rockets, and women in space age minis.

Unfortunately, the movie doesn't spend much time there. Instead we transition to present day, where Casey Newton (Britt Robertson) is a gifted teenager sad about the dismantling of NASA, doing all she can to make sure the launch pad doesn't get demolished. Her school lessons are filled with the doom and gloom of our horrible world, and Casey dares to ask "What can we do about it?" Of course, her mediocre teachers have no answer to that.

After finding a "T" pin in her possession, and discovering that touching it brings her into the gleaming world of Tomorrowland, but only temporarily, Casey goes on a quest to get to the bottom of it. When she meets her "recruiter," she directs Casey to Frank, now a middle-aged inventor living in seclusion. Seems he was banished from Tomorrowland years ago for building something, the end of the world is neigh, and Casey is the only person who can stop it. As long as they can get back to Tomorrowland.

While all of that sounds simple enough, the movie takes forever to get the plot moving, and once it does, it's still a muddled mess. What did Frank do that was so bad? Why is the villain a villain? What's to be gained from letting the world die? And is a future where all the world's awesome people get to live somewhere else, while us plebes have to stay on Earth doing our mediocre best really a future to aspire to?

But perhaps some good can come of the film. If its success means Disneyland will finally get off its butt and turn the actual Tomorrowland back into the gleaming model of futurism it once was, I hope it makes a billion dollars.

At a shareholders meeting in SF this morning, Disney chairman and CEO Bob Iger made a few big announcements with regard to the Star Wars franchise, and fans across the internet are already going nuts. First off, the title of the first Star Wars stand-alone feature will be Rogue One, and it will star Oscar nominee Felicity Jones (The Theory of Everything) and be directed by Gareth Edwards (Monsters, Godzilla). The other news: Looper director Rian Johnson has officially been confirmed as director of Star Wars: Episode VIII, which is set for release on May 26, 2017 — forty years (and one day) after the release of the original Star Wars film in 1977.

The rumor that Johnson was signed on to direct the next two films in the series dates back to last June, but now it's made official.

The news was posted on StarWars.com, and Johnson immediately took to Twitter to crack wise.

Johnson is a well respected writer-director who's already built a sci-fi following because of 2012's Looper, and he was also the director on three episodes of Breaking Bad, "Fly", "Fifty-One", and "Ozymandias," the latter which was named the best in the series overall by series creator Vince Gilligan.

Back in 2012 when Disney snapped up Lucasfilm for $4 billion, George Lucas said that he was ready to pass along the Star Wars franchise to "the next generation of filmmakers." Episode Seven of the franchise, the first to be made by Disney with Lucas only as consultant, titled Star Wars: The Force Awakens, comes out December 18. It's directed by J.J. Abrams and stars Lupita Nyong'o and Girls' Adam Driver, with Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, and Mark Hamill all reprising their original roles. See that trailer below.

As for the title of the stand-alone feature, Rogue One, which will be written by About a Boy screenwriter Chris Weitz and is due out in December 2016, Rogue One is what Luke Skywalker was called in The Empire Strikes Back.

There's been a lot of talk, maybe too much talk about the changing face of San Francisco. But in an upcoming Disney flick, San Francisco's face changes more drastically than any of us are currently imagining, into a Blade Runner meets Star Trek meets Epcot vision called "San Fransokyo."

As Gizmodo reports, Big Hero 6 is based on a Tokyo-set Marvel comic book, but the animated film's directors opted to merge the classic setting with San Francisco, resulting in what they say is "an exact representation" of the city, just with Japanese details.

The animators used detailed property data from the city's Assessor-Recorder's office—available thanks to the city's progressive open data program—to get detailed information about the city's 83,000 buildings and the nearly exact number and location of elements like streetlights and street trees. "We don't claim you can find your house" says Big Hero 6's technical supervisor Hank Driskill. "But if you go to where your house is, you'll find the right building of the right size."

You can get a little more of an idea of what they were going for in this clip of some "Cable Car" footage below:

According to Disney, the film, which seems like a perfectly pleasant thing to take a kid to, will open on November 7.

[h/t Curbed SF]

After Disney bought out Lucasfilm and acquired the rights to Star Wars, anticipation for the next installment of George Lucas' money-printing space epic shot way up among fanboys, fangirls, and merchandising opportunists. At CinemaCon in Las Vegas today, the Disney-Lucasfilm doomsday machine announced they will crank out new Star Wars installments at the rate of one per year for the foreseeable future.

After Disney tacks on the lastest episode to the original saga, they'll round out the five or six-year plan by alternating releases between the new trilogy and spinoff flicks. Rumor has it those will focus on on Boba Fett, Yoda and a young Han Solo. (Which wouldn't even be the first time Harrison Ford got prequel'ed.)

So what should viewers expect from the forthcoming Episode VII? Production on the J.J. Abrams-directed installment has yet to begin, but screenwriter Michael Arndt, best known for penning Little Miss Sunshine and Toy Story 3, has reportedly turned in a script. In the meantime, noted geek Patton Oswalt improvised his own pitch for the movie in character while taping an upcoming episode of Parks & Recreation, and it is just insane in the best way possible:

Spider-robot Chewbacca FTW, as they say.

Previously: Disney Buys Lucasfilm for $4 Billion; George Lucas Passes 'Star Wars' on 'To a New Generation of Filmmakers'
[FilmThrasher]
[io9]

Just months after Disney acquired Presidio-based Lucasfilm for $4 billion, the entertainment behemoth has reportedly closed down LucasArts and laid off its entire staff from its offices in San Francisco and Singapore, with the exception of a small team to handle game licensing. The division of Lucasfilm has been creating video games for over 30 years, and was working on development of two new games, Star Wars: First Assault and Star Wars 1313, which have now been cancelled. Disney has declined to specify how many employees were dismissed today.

According to a Death Star LucasArts statement, DIsney is super appreciative and proud of the people whose creative work they've just flushed down the toilet (though the games they were putting out as of late certainly weren't the best):

"After evaluating our position in the games market, we've decided to shift LucasArts from an internal development to a licensing model, minimizing the company's risk while achieving a broader portfolio of quality Star Wars games. As a result of this change, we've had layoffs across the organization. We are incredibly appreciative and proud of the talented teams who have been developing our new titles."

In other Disney news, 'Finding Dory', starring Ellen Degeneres' voice, is apparently not an April Fool's joke.

[Kotaku]
[Mashable]