Facebook Launches Star Wars: The Force Awakens 360 Video

Ride Rey's speeder on the desert planet of Jakku

As we await the long-promised, but still unannounced new trailer for Star Wars: The Force Awakens, the team working away in that galaxy far, far away has dropped a fun little video nugget today. There’s a new, 360-degree video sequence set on Jakku that has come online via Facebook. 

The video gives you the opportunity to ride along on Rey’s (Daisy Ridley) speeder across the harsh desert terrain and take a look at various structures and creatures as you do so, using either your mouse on a web browser or the touchscreen on a mobile device. Created by ILM’s virtual reality lab, it’s not clear how closely it ties into the film’s story, though the spaceship graveyard does look awfully familiar, and your hear BB-8 at the end.   

It’s all part of a new drive by Facebook to put 360 video on timelines, with content from the likes of Discovery, GoPro and Saturday Night Live up right now. The plan is for any user with the right camera/phone to be able to upload footage using the system. Currently it only works on certain browsers and Android devices (which seems odd given Disney’s close relationship with Apple, but then this is Facebook’s project), but is a glimpse at the future of such interactive ideas.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens, meanwhile, arrives in the UK on December 17. 

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Will Serial Season 2 Follow the Story of American POW Bowe Bergdahl?

Serial, the NPR podcast that captivated listeners last year, may focus its second season on the case of an American soldier who vanished in Afghanistan in 2009 under "mysterious circumstances," according to Maxim.

Serial has announced that it will broadcast at least two more seasons, and sources tell

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FX Renews Sex&Drugs&Rock&Roll for Season 2

FX has renewed the Denis Leary comedy Sex&Drugs&Rock&Roll for a second season, the network announced Wednesday. The 10-episode sophomore run will premiere in 2016.

Sex&Drugs&Rock&Roll stars Leary as "Johnny Rock," lead singer of the '90s rock band The Heathens, who were on the brink of becoming

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Ridley Scott Planning More Prometheus Sequels

And when can we expect more overt links to Alien?

In news that will send some hearts beating faster and others starting to fill with barely-concealed vitriol, Ridley Scott has revealed that he has plans for the Prometheus universe that expand beyond the sequel now in pre-production.

Talking with German site FilmFutter – so be aware that there are always translation issues when covering such stories – he was asked when Prometheus will tie in explicitly with the films he himself kicked off back in 1979 with Alien. "It won’t be in the next movie," he says. "It will be the one after this one, or maybe even a fourth film, before we get back into the Alien franchise." Yes, it appears he’s taking a leaf out of Aliens/Avatar director James Cameron’s book and keeping the story going. We have to wonder whether he’ll have the time to do it all, even given his usual fast pace when cranking out movies, or if he’ll go the same route as he did with Alien and hand other films off to different directors. We can imagine one person feeling less than pleased if Prometheus does extend across a longer run - Neill Blomkamp, whose plan to make more Alien films is reportedly on hold until Scott feels he's satisfied with the Prometheus universe.

Scott also talked more about what he sees the driving idea behind the whole Prometheus story, regardless of how many movies it ends up covering. "The whole point of it is to explain the Alien franchise and to explain the how and why of the creation of the Alien itself," he says. "I always saw the Alien as a type of biological warfare. For me, the original spaceship that I call the croissant was a battleship that contains these biomechanoid creatures, that are all about destruction."

He’s now gearing up to shoot Prometheus 2, working from Michael Green’s script. And for a film about space that’s drawing much more consistent praise, Scott's latest, The Martian, arrives on September 30. 

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Independence Day: Resurgence Will Have A Comic Book Prequel

Titan Comics is planning a series to link the original and the sequel

It’s become common these days for big films to have comic-book tie-ins that either expand the universe of the story or serve as a prequel to fill in details before the opening credits roll. Independence Day Resurgence is taking the latter route, with The Hollywood Reporter hearing from Titan Comics that a comic book is in the works.

It makes sense for the film, which is set 20 years after the events of the original, to have some story strands spread across a comic to avoid every character having to stop the scenes for some exposition (not that we won’t see plenty of it anyway). So far, the exact details of the new title are a mystery – we don’t know what it will be called, who the writing/art team will be or when it’ll arrive in stores. But somewhat surprisingly, Editor Steve White does mention that it’ll be a rich psychological prison drama with "a golden opportunity to segue nicely into next year's blockbuster sequel by taking the mythos of the original and maybe adding a little darkness to it." Which has us wondering who exactly is in prison and how that ties into the new movie’s story... 

With Roland Emmerich once more directing, this time working from a script by Carter Blanchard, James A. Woods and Nicholas Wright, the film features Jeff Goldblum, Bill Pullman, Judd Hirsch, Vivica A. Fox, Brent Spiner returning to their roles plus ID newbies Liam Hemsworth, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Jessie Usher, Maika Monroe and Sela Ward. Independence Day Resurgence arrives on June 24, 2016. 

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Should You Be Optimistic About Fox's Familiar Rosewood?

Things are awfully bright on Fox's new drama Rosewood, and it's only partly because of the Miami sun.

"The seed of the idea was to do a show about an eternal optimist," creator Todd Harthan tells TVGuide.com. "I felt like anti-heroes and cynics were being well-serviced on TV, and I thought I'd go the

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How Will the Law & Order: SVU Team Move on Without Amaro?

Detective Amaro may be gone fromLaw & Order: SVU, but there are still many more changes to come.

Although Danny Pino's exit from the series will not be discussed laboriously in the two-hour Season 17 premiere (Wednesday at 9/8c, NBC), the emotional weight of Amaro's loss will be felt through the

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