É BB-8 feminino?

In-universe atualizado. TL; DR: O mais canônico é que ele é do sexo masculino.

• Não há sexo claramente especificado no filme para minha lembrança (esta parte está sujeita a revisão enquanto eu assisto novamente, ou como o script oficial está disponível) .

• O BB-8 é referido como "ele" na novelização de Alan Dean Foster, então a resposta é "não feminina" .

  Exceto que, às vezes, é um "não" também não atribuído.

  Where a human would see only empty night sky, advanced calibrated synthetic optics saw a moving point of light. When the light resolved itself into four separate points, the droid commenced an agitated beeping. The phenomenon he was seeing might signify nothing, except…

  Beeping and whistling in something approaching cybernetic panic, the droid spun and sped back toward the village. That is, its head spun... While it could have transmitted the conclusion it had reached, it did not do so for fear of any such message being intercepted

  So BB-8 was forced to dodge and avoid, which he did with skill and patience,...

  Deep within the village, there was far less likelihood of encountering anything domesticated that was worth eating: a biological process he understood from an objective point of view but for which he could never rouse much empathy. His goal was close, and there was not a nanosecond to lose.

  ...Far away now, a solitary spherical droid looked back even as it continued to flee. The fireball that rose into the sky suggested the detonation of something far more volatile than primitive buildings and scrapped mechanicals. If he could have rolled faster, the frightened droid would have done so.
  ... There were things in the vacant, wild regions of underdeveloped planets that would gladly take apart a solitary droid just to see what made it tick. Or roll, he knew. His internal gyros threatened to send him tumbling wildly at the very thought of such an encounter.
  Droids such as him were not meant for unpopulated places, and he desperately desired to find others like himself. Or, failing that, even people.

• Nenhuma informação de gênero na página de dicionário visual de Pablo Hidalgo para BB-8.

Fora do Universo:

Conforme o status do Facebook, "é complicado".

• Por um lado, JJ Abrams tinha a fama de dizer :

  JJ [Abrams] was determined to make BB-8 cute and strong – and female. They want to appeal to girls as much boys, who have traditionally been the fan base. She’s going to be one of the breakout hits of the film.”

  A mesma fonte diz:

  Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy later referred to BB-8 as “she”, and reports from the films set, as well as some of the Star Wars publicity materials, suggested that the new droid was a girl (confusingly, puppeteers Dave Chapman and Brian Herring, who are responsible for operating the robot, have previously referred to BB-8 as “him”).

• No entanto, o mesmo JJAbrams chamou o BB-8 de "ele" em Entertainment Weekly .

  Abrams chose the droid’s name because it looked round and bouncy. “I named him BB-8 because it was almost onomatopoeia,” the director says. “It was sort of how he looked to me, with the 8, obviously, and then the 2 B’s.”

• Todo o "talento" por trás do BB-8 era masculino:

  Dave Chapman and Brian Herring served as puppeteers for BB-8,[36] with Bill Hader and Ben Schwartz credited as "Vocal Consultants"[37]. (Wiki, citing SW.com news and HitFlix)

  No entanto, pelo que pude perceber nas entrevistas de Ben Schwartz, a maior parte do "talento" veio do aplicativo para iPad, que mais uma vez apóia o status "sem gênero", já que os iPads não têm gênero.

(a resposta da @ rand tem detalhes mais completos do status "complicado"):

Não claro, mas provavelmente masculino.

Esta citação (publicada em 13 de novembro de 2015) de Neal Scanlan, o chefe do A loja de criaturas Star Wars: A Força Desperta , resume bem a confusão:

I’m still not sure, dare I say, whether BB-8 is male or female. BB-8 was female in our eyes. And then she became male. And that’s all part of the evolution, not only visually, but in the way they move, how they hold themselves.

Uma fonte anônima "próxima aos cineastas" disse :

There’s never been a strong female robot in any Star Wars film. [JJ Abrams] was determined to make BB-8 cute and strong – and female. They want to appeal to girls as much boys, who have traditionally been the fan base. She’s going to be one of the breakout hits of the film.

De acordo com o mesmo artigo, publicado em 2 de novembro de 2015, a presidente da Lucasfilm, Kathleen Kennedy, também se referiu ao BB-8 como "ela".

JJ Abrams se referiu ao BB-8 como homem em entrevista publicada em dezembro de 2015:

Yes, BB-8 is a great character, amazingly puppeteered, but what will happen when he’s suddenly in a scene with C-3P0 or R2-D2? Will it feel bizarre? Will it feel wrong? Somehow it didn’t.

Brian Herring, um dos marionetistas que executam o BB-8, também referiu-se a ele como homem (publicado em 26 de agosto de 2015):

BB-8 can cock his head over and look away, he can double take, he can look scared, he can look angry. We managed to find a whole vocabulary of movement for him, if you will. We worked out a whole bunch of stuff. What would he do if you turned him off? What happens to his head if you power him down? Does he go down stairs? Does he go up stairs?

Curiosamente, esta questão foi recentemente colocada para o elenco e a equipe. Os resultados foram mistos, com a maioria dizendo que eles nunca pensaram sobre isso ou dizendo como um droid BB-8 foi sem gênero. JJ Abrahams afirmou

I always refer to him as a 'he'. But I don't know, I haven't looked under the hood.

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