WASHINGTON — Starting Friday, a major promotional effort will be unleashed by Lucasfilm, eBay and Major League Baseball to support the cancer charity Stand Up to Cancer (SU2C).
The promotion will coincide with the launching of “Star Wars: the Complete Saga” on Blu-ray.
SU2C was established by the Entertainment Industry Foundation in 2008 to raise funds to speed up collaborative cancer research emphasizing getting the treatments to patients as swiftly as possible. The website says that 100 percent of public donations “will go directly to cancer research.”
On the Internet, the “Star Wars” YouTube channel will have a video, “Use the Force for Good,” where celebrity supporters encourage donations by recreating classic scenes. Among the actors are comedians Zach Galifianakis, Ken Jeong, Seth Rogen and Emma Stone.
This month, Major League Baseball will be promoting “Star Wars” themed nights at various ballparks which include costumed characters and exclusive T-shirts. To check on whether your team is supporting the effort, check mlb.com/starwars
eBay offers “one-of-a-kind” items such as a 2012 Volkswagen Passat, like the one shown in the Super Bowl campaign of 2011 (available in the U.S. only), and a dinner with San Francisco area filmmakers George Lucas, Francis Ford Coppola (“The Godfather”), Chris Columbus (“Harry Potter”) and John Lasseter of Pixar and Disney, among others.
The auctions will be offered worldwide in the U.S., U.K, Germany, France, Italy and Spain. They start Friday and end Sept. 23.
Also offered at Stand Up To Cancer’s website are a special line of “Star Wars” T-shirts with the SU2C’s upward arrow next to a Stormtrooper and the words “Blast Cancer.” Aimed at men is a shirt that’s a riff off the iconic Hildebrand-design classic “Star Wars” poster with Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa on top of the words “Use the Force for Good.” For women, there’s a grey shirt with “Yoda Stands Up To Cancer.”
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