It originally only came with four male characters and no females.

The campaign to get Rey included started in 2015, when an eight-year-old girl wrote an open letter to the company behind it.

But despite Hasbro agreeing to the change in 2016, it’s taken until now for Rey’s “character token” to appear.

When it was released in September 2015, the only figures that came with the board game were Finn, Kylo Ren, Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader.

How gamers influenced Battlefront 2

At the time Hasbro said they didn’t include Rey – the main character from The Force Awakens – because they didn’t want to ruin “a key plot line” in the film, which wasn’t out yet.

But they faced pressure from fans – including eight-year-old Annie Rose, who posted a handwritten letter on Twitter.

So, in January 2016, the company relented.

But despite this promise, last week fans were still waiting.

According to The New York Times, a Hasbro spokesman said this was because retailers in some markets “already had adequate inventory of the original version of the 2015 game, so they opted not to take in additional inventory of the new version”.

She added that the updated version of the game was sold in “several markets around the world but [was] not available for sale in the US due to insufficient interest”.

And this prompted a response from Bad Robot – the production company owned by Star Wars director J.J. Abrams.

Now Hasbro has updated its website to announce that a version of the game – complete with Rey – will be available in the US on July 25.

But listings in the UK still state that the game only comes with four “character tokens”.

Newsbeat has contacted Hasbro for comment and awaits a response.

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Source: BBC

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The venue near Waterloo was evacuated along with nearby pubs and restaurants after the security alert was raised.

On social media, theatregoers said they and the cast had been moved to the nearby Imperial War Museum gardens.

Police said the incident was now over. Boyega is playing the lead role in the play Woyzeck at the theatre.

The Old Vic had earlier tweeted: “We have been evacuated as a precaution; audience safety is our priority. We are liaising with the Met Police.”

A Met Police spokeswoman said it had been called at about 14:30 BST to a report of a security alert at the theatre and a decision was taken to evacuate the building.

About two hours later the police force said the incident was “not suspicious”.

Boyega is best known for playing Finn in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, the seventh film in the Star Wars series.

In the current production at the Old Vic, he plays a young British soldier in 1980s Berlin during the Cold War and his performance has been widely praised by theatre critics.

The UK terrorism threat level was earlier reduced from critical to severe earlier, five days after the Manchester Arena attack but increased security remains in place at events across the country.

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Source: BBC

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The movie follows on from The Force Awakens and will feature the late Carrie Fisher as General Leia Organa.

Many fans pointed out that it looks like, for a brief moment, Fisher makes an appearance in this new footage.

The trailer was unveiled at a Star Wars celebration in Orlando, Florida and amassed thousands of views online in just a few minutes.

(Warning: Third party video may contain adverts)

A new poster has also been presented to the public, which includes images of Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker) and Daisy Ridley (Rey).

While the trailer might have given fans a peek at the new film, it’s also left them with more questions than answers.

Adam Driver, Oscar Isaac, Lupita Nyong’o, Domhnall Gleeson, Anthony Daniels, Gwendoline Christie, and Andy Serkis are all returning for The Last Jedi.

Audiences get a glimpse of Rey’s Jedi training and Luke’s instruction.

“Breathe. Just, breathe. Now reach out. What do you see?” Luke says in a voiceover.

“Light. Darkness. A balance,” Rey says.

“It’s so much bigger,” he replies.

Mystery surrounds the identity of Rey’s parents and many fans have speculated that Luke is her father.

Carrie Fisher died in December 2016 but had shot all her scenes for this Star Wars instalment.

It’s thought producers may use some of this material in the ninth Star Wars film.

The Last Jedi will be in cinemas on 15 December.

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Source: BBC

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Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said Tuesday that the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art will be located in Exposition Park in downtown Los Angeles.

“I believed in the vision for the Lucas Museum, and we went after it with everything we have — because I know that L.A. is the ideal place for making sure that it touches the widest possible audience,” Garcetti said in a statement, thanking Lucas and his wife, Mellody Hobson.

The museum was initially planned for Chicago, but Lucas ran into legal challenges from an open-spaces group and pulled the project. Garcetti immediately moved to woo the filmmaker to house the museum in Los Angeles.

The proposed museum, valued at $1 billion and funded by Lucas, would feature exhibitions of Lucas’ collection of paintings, illustrations and digital art from the blockbuster “Star Wars” movie franchise he started in 1977.

“South Los Angeles’s Promise Zone best positions the museum to have the greatest impact on the broader community, fulfilling our goal of inspiring, engaging and educating a broad and diverse visitorship,” the museum’s board of directors said in a statement.

The proposed site for the museum is next to the University of Southern California, where Lucas studied film and met future collaborators including Steven Spielberg.

Lucas sold his “Star Wars” franchise to Walt Disney Co. in 2012 for $4 billion.

Disney rebooted the franchise with six new films, including a new trilogy in the space saga commencing with 2015’s “The Force Awakens,” and standalone stories such as December’s “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.”

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Source: Reuters

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The first standalone “Star Wars” story, “Rogue One” is set just before “A New Hope” — the original film in the blockbuster series — and stars Felicity Jones as rebel Jyn Erso alongside Mads Mikkelsen and Forest Whitaker.

Following a grand “Star Wars” tradition, the trailer teases a film preoccupied with the themes of family loyalty and the conflicts of parenthood — with the usual weird aliens, light sabers and stormtroopers thrown in for good measure.

“Jyn, whatever I do, I do it to protect you,” Mikkelsen’s Galen Erso tells his little girl at the opening of the 157-second spot, which premiered during ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

In a big reveal, Galen is shown to be instrumental to the Empire in building their weapon of mass destruction, the Death Star.

The strained father-daughter relationship appears to spur on Jyn — a delinquent with a string of convictions for forgery, assault and theft — as she embarks on a mission to destroy the planet-sized weapon.

The first full-length trailer released in August gave fans their first glimpse of Darth Vader since 2005’s “Revenge of the Sith.”

Viewers are again treated to a split second cameo by the Dark Lord of the Sith, this time from the front as he listens to the Empire’s Director Orson Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn) boasting about the awesome power of his new toy.

It has not been revealed which actor has been hired for Vader’s latest big screen outing, due to hit theaters in the United States on December 16.

The character was voiced in the original trilogy by James Earl Jones, now 85, while 81-year-old David Prowse donned the iconic cape and helmet.

Last year’s “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” made more than $2 billion worldwide, and analysts have backed “Rogue One” to dominate this year’s box office.

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Source: AFP

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