Names and faces

Screenwriter Michael Arndt is exiting Star Wars: Episode VII with director J.J. Abrams and Lawrence Kasdan assuming scripting duties. Lucasfilm made the unexpected announcement Thursday. Kasdan co-wrote The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, making him a revered figured in Star Wars lore. The 64-year-old scribe, who also wrote Raiders of the Lost Ark, had been serving as a consultant on the film. “There are few people who fundamentally understand the way a ‘Star Wars’ story works like Larry,” Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy said in a statement. “Michael Arndt has done a terrific job bringing us to this point.” Arndt was named the sole screenwriter last year. He won an Oscar for the script to Little Miss Sunshine, and also wrote Toy Story 3 and The Hunger Games: Catching Fire. Shooting for Star Wars: Episode VII is to start in the spring, with the film due out in 2015.

Stacy Keach’s schedule is quite full these days. “I have done four sitcoms in five weeks!” said the 72-year-old actor, who first demonstrated his comedic chops as Cheech and Chong’s nemesis Sgt. Stedenko in the 1978 stoner comedy Up in Smoke. Just last week, he appeared in the L.A. Theatre Works production of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya at UCLA, and on Sunday he’ll be narrating Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” at the “EEK! At the Greek” Halloween concert with the Symphony in the Glen Orchestra. Keach also brought poignancy to his role as a veteran plane named Skipper in Planes, Disney’s animated hit - he’ll be back for the sequel - and he has a showy supporting role as the boorish former business partner of Woody (Bruce Dern), an elderly man who believes he’s won $1 million in a sweepstakes, in Alexander Payne’s forthcoming Nebraska. “I’m sort of the bad guy,” Keach said with a smile during a recent interview at his publicist’s office in Beverly Hills, Calif. The actor’s schedule is already mapped out for the next several months. He is about to fly to Vancouver, British Columbia, to start a movie, and come spring, he’ll play Shakespeare’s larger-than-life rapscallion Falstaff in Henry IV, Parts I and II in Washington, D.C.