Disney’s D23 Expo (D23 is Disney’s fan club, referencing 1923, the year Walt Disney arrived in California and started his studio) came and went this past weekend, giving us some insights on upcoming Disney projects ranging from theme parks, to animation, to live action movies. This is exciting to us, because that means we got new details on new Marvel and Star Wars crap coming down the pipe. As neither Gedge or I were able (or willing) to attend the conference, here’s what we heard second hand.

Star Wars:

First up, let’s talk about the neat Star Wars stuff we got.

Star Wars Land!

So, the biggest singular Star Wars news item from the expo is the upcoming Star Wars themed park that will be added to both Disney Land and Walt Disney World. This seems to be comparable to the Harry Potter park at the Universal Studios park, but much more in my wheelhouse. The only real feature discussed was a Millennium Falcon ride, which is really just a given. Give me a speeder bike ride, or give me death!

Rogue One Photo!

We got our first look at the upcoming Star Wars side movie Rogue One. It depicts the gnarly looking band of rebels that end up stealing the Death Star plans (spoiler?). I love the gritty scifi look of this. It almost looks more like an Alien movie than Star Wars. Also, Donnie Yen! Ip Man in a galaxy far, far away. It was also announced that our current Hannibal Lecter and former Bond villain Mads Mikkelsen is going to be in the movie, we can only hope he’ll be the most menacing Imperial Officer of all time. Lastly, Alan Tudyk will also be a part of the cast, so they’re finally getting their Firefly in our Star Wars. I was already pretty excited about this one, and all this new info just gets me more pumped.

Force Awakens Poster!

So, there didn’t seem to be any real news about the upcoming main story movie, but we did get this bitchin’ Drew Struzan teaser poster. The neatest thing about this one is John Boyega wielding what looks to be Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber from New Hope and Empire. Also you have manic looking Han Solo, which is nice.

I guess the other big news is that Jurassic World‘s Colin Trevorrow will be directing Episode IX following Rian Johnson’s Episode IIX. This isn’t super exciting for me, because even the people that like the JP movie didn’t exactly cite the film’s direction as anything special. I haven’t seen it, so I reserve judgement, but this kind of reeks of money leading the nose, rather than talent. I guess the good news is that Johnson will still be plotting out the story based on where he leaves the episode IIX, so hopefully no Ewoks show up.