Kennedy points to Disney’s prior success with Pixar and Marvel as a key influencer for the $4.05 billion deal. She also says that Lucas, “her Yoda,” will most definitely be involved in the pass-the-lightsaber process of meeting with screenwriters and determining a basic storyline for the next Star Wars film.

The funniest part of the video conversation occurs at the very end, when Kennedy jokes that a retired Lucas can blog about how his gatekeeper-successors are messing it all up.

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FishbowlLA decided to take the opportunity to check in with the film’s celebrated casting director Mike Fenton, whose voice can be heard off-camera reading with Thomas. Sure enough, there was much more to this momentous day than what appears in the clip below.

“What Thomas’ agent neglected to tell us was that he and his mom lived about five hours from the closest major airport in Texas,” Fenton recalls via telephone. “So on that particular Friday, Henry got up at 4:30 a.m. and by the time he was having lunch with me at the studio commissary, he was very quiet, his head was drooping.”

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The journalist’s seven, veteran Spielberg collaborator guests were: producer Kathleen Kennedy; production designer Rick Carter; first assistant director Adam Somner; costume designer Joanna Johnston; make-up artist Lois Burwell; cinematographer Janusz Kaminski; and editor Michael Kahn. Kennedy shared many great anecdotes, including one about how director Peter Jackson, during a pre-production session in New Zealand some years ago for Tintin, innocently tipped his collection of World War I collectibles and asked her if she wanted to see it:

“I think I’m going to see a few little trinkets,” Kennedy said. “I went into at least three warehouses bigger than this entire theater, with airplanes, tanks, trucks, guns… It was the most insane thing I’ve ever seen. So when I got back, I told Steven, ‘I don’t know how we do this [War Horse], but Peter’s got everything.’”

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Milli Vanilli, the Grammy winnning 80s duo, will get the big screen treatment thanks to writer-director Jeff Nathanson. Kathleen Kennedy will produce for Universal. Nathanson said he’s always been fascinated by fakes and frauds.

DirecTV subscribers will get Ovation, a cable channel devoted to arts programming. The COO, Ron Garfield, promises a revamp of the channel–which could mean that celebrity poker is now an art form.

The looming WGA strike has producers stockpiling scripts, and reality shows shooting around the clock. The contract expires in October, and some studios are thinkng about moving up the production cycle from August to May or June. This means stars like Keifer Sutherland won’t be able to make movies during the summer hiatus, which may not be a bad thing.

Craig Pilagian, reality master-mind, is suing Paula Abdul and David Russo, claiming they stole his idea for Hey Paula!. Because following her around with a camera crew is the most original idea ever to spring from the mind of man.

Parker Posey moves into television in The Return of Jezebel James Amy Sherman-Palladino’s comedy pilot centers on a successful children’s book editor (newly single and unable to conceive) asks her estranged younger sister to carry her baby for her. It must be funnier than it sounds.

Rupert Everett’s book, Red Carpets and Other Banana Skins, should be in every goodie bag this season, but probably won’t be:

Giving an award is one of the most depressing pastimes known to man. You stand in the wings with another publicity starved celebrity in borrowed jewels. You breeze onto the set to one or other of your famous theme tunes.

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