No, this is not the final look for Andy Serkis’s gravel-voiced character in Star Wars: The Force Awakens. The picture, as you’ll have guessed, shows him in his performance-capture rig. But we do at least now know his character’s name thanks to Vanity Fair and the official Star Wars site: Supreme Leader Snoke.
We’ll have to wait to see what Snoke actually looks like once ILM have worked their industrial light-based magic on his performance, but it’s safe to say that Snoke is probably not the friendliest sort. It’s not mentioned in the piece on the site, but we’d wager a hefty bag of credits that he’s the top dog in the First Order, born from the ruins of the Galactic Empire. That's his voice talking over the original teaser for the film.
The image is a shot that was never published in the Vanity Fair issue, which saw Annie Leibovitz photographing the likes of Lupita Nyong’o, Oscar Isaac and Adam Driver, who J.J. Abrams compares to Marlon Brando, according to Leibovitz.
We’ll have to wait and see exactly how Serkis fits into the continuing story in that galaxy far, far away, but Star Wars: The Force Awakens will be with us on December 18.