In a recent posting at ET online, Mark Hamill has disclosed that Disney and Lucasfilm officials have been talking to him and other key personnel from the original Star Wars about being cast in Star Wars: Episode VII, the upcoming first chapter in the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy. This may be a "well, duh" and/or "thanks for the report, Captain Obvious" for some of you – but as far as I know, this is the first time Hamill’s mentioned any official talks about casting.

In a discussion while promoting his new film, Sushi Girl (which actually looks rather cool in a Grindhouse sort of way), Hamill was asked about the status of casting for Episode VII.

I remember in 1994 when George Lucas announced he was making the Star Wars Prequel Trilogy. The announcement opened a door to over a decade in which I was able to channel my obsession with Star Wars into hunting down any and all tidbits of filming news. It was a fascinating and exciting period, and one of the things I learned from that time was an ability and skill to filter the facts from the rumors from the horseshit.

Star Wars was somewhat breaking new ground on the internet during that time, and it was the fans that were leading the charge. Sure there were many basement-dwelling neckbeards who became elitist trolls, but on the positive tread of the tire, it was the Star Wars fans who popularized the meme phrase "spoilers" in that early internet phase – and while there are cited examples of the phrase being used pre-internet, it truly was the Star Wars addicts that pushed it from web meme to culturally recognizable phrase.

Consequently here we are in a new exciting era in which we get to follow news and rumors and speculations on what we could possibly expect from Star Wars: Episode VII and the other chapters of the Sequel Trilogy. Having said that, we are in a completely new era now, with a lot of newer and younger fans out there, so I thought I would ramble on a bit about what we can expect, and the likelihood of certain elements arising.

Permit me to preface the list below by saying that I’ve held off from doing this article for some time. I wanted to wait until we at least had a confirmed director. And now we have, in the form of J.J. Abrams. But this also emphasizes an important aspect of Star Wars fan lore when it comes to new movies: EVERYTHING is rumor or speculation until confirmed by the official Star Wars site. This is almost biblical canon or Force Holocron or karma sutra or something to the hardcore SW nuts like me, and I can almost see the Prequel era speculators nodding their heads at this.

So here we go. Bear in mind, these are early days, and there are some only basic fundamentals we can ascertain right now. But at this point, in 2013, what can we possibly expect from Star Wars: Episode VII?

“I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced”¦”

Several Star Wars fans may have felt this way or even recalled the above quote with the announcement on October 30 that Disney had acquired Lucasfilm, and were proceeding forward with the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy commencing with the release of Episode VII in 2015. Some may have even had strokes. The news was initially perceived to be a possible joke by many fans, and I’m sure many pondered whether it was actually April Fool’s Day and not Halloween.

In spite of this, the news is very real, and the new Disney Lucasfilm (is that actually a name now?) is steaming ahead with upcoming and current projects.

Following the breaking of the news, I followed the link to the Disney Investors Conference Call to listen in on the full sordid details on the acquisition. It was a bizarre experience; I felt like I was eavesdropping on the Empire in some kind of twisted livestreaming Space Watergate, but it was incredibly informative.

Since then, I’ve got many thoughts and theories and opinions on this massive purchase by Disney, and while I’m going to go through them on the latest Social Blend podcast, I wanted to put fingers to keyboard here at Geeks Of Doom.