False alarm, people. Michael McDonald, the Reuters reporter who started yesterday’s Yavin 4 rumours, has put the story to bed: It was all a big misunderstanding. There are no leaked story elements from Disney about the new Star Wars movie.
Yesterday, a Reuters report made the rounds, notable for apparently official information about the plot of the new film, and a thousand nerd blogs cried out at once. But even at the time, it was pretty unlikely that official information would leak like that, which we pointed out. Turns out, as expected, it was just a screwup. Here’s what McDonald told to TheForce.net:
“This was a mistake. I misunderstood what fan clubs had told me and shown me in book plots and that storyline has not been announced by Disney. Perhaps I should have written something along the lines of ‘Yavin 4 appears in several Star Wars book plots and while Guatemala fans said they hope film crews return to Tikal, the company has not announced plans for the new episode.’”
Oh well. At least the lid’s back on the Extended Universe can of worms for a while. [TheForce]