Everyone may not get their 15 minutes of fame, but as Saoirse Ronan said on our Podcast back in October, everyone currently working in the acting profession will eventually take a meeting with director (and now co-writer) J.J. Abrams for the new** Star Wars**. The latest name to crop up in relation to Episode VII is Chiwetel Ejiofor.
That Ejiofor would sit down with Abrams is hardly surprising, since he’s been proving his acting chops for years and is currently a strong Oscar contender for his excellent performance in 1****2 Years A Slave. And the last time Ejiofor appeared in something with spaceships, it was in Serenity, and he was outstanding.
A reference to Ejiofor being spotted at the Bad Robot offices is buried at the end of a Times Magazine interview with Abrams (buried behind a pay forcefield but excerpted by The Telegraph), which also has Star Wars’ current guiding light again explaining what he loves about the universe.. "I loved how Star Wars had that sense of a world far beyond the borders of what you can see and have been told – it's one of the things it did so brilliantly. If you watch the first movie, you don't actually know exactly what the Empire is trying to do. They're going to rule by fear – but you don't know what their end game is. The beauty of that movie was that it was an unfamiliar world, and yet you wanted to see it expand and to see where it went."
With Abrams now at work polishing the script alongside Lawrence Kasdan, shooting is still scheduled to start early next year for Disney’s vaunted 2015 release date. Meanwhile, Flicks And The City talked to Ejiofor on a red carpet and asked him directly about the** Star Wars** rumours. Naturally, he was evasive, but that could be because Bossk is off to one side with a sniper rifle. Of course, the actor's involvement is still floating in the realms of mere possibility, so sound the Rumour Alert Klaxon!