Monday, May 20, 2013

The future of Star Wars - Part 1 - Animation

Since Disney's acquisition of the entire Star Wars franchise from George Lucas last year, there has already been and there will will be some interesting developments. The first I want to highlight here is something that was just announced, a new Star Wars animated series to take place between the prequels and the original trilogy.

Entitled Star Wars: Rebels, it will conceivably follow the saga of the genesis of The Rebel Alliance from the end of Star Wars, Episode II: Revenge of the Sith to the beginning of Star Wars, Episode IV: A New Hope "an era spanning almost two decades never-before explored on-screen. Rebels takes place in a time where the Empire is securing its grip on the galaxy and hunting down the last of the Jedi Knights as a fledgling rebellion against the Empire is taking shape."

Screenwriter/producer Simon X-Men: First Class Kinberg will be joined by Greg Young Justice Weisman and Star Wars: Clone Wars supervising director Dave Filoni as Executive Producers on the new series "scheduled to premiere in fall 2014 as a one-hour special telecast on Disney Channel" and then "will be followed by a series on Disney XD channels around the world."


Filoni himself did provide a tidbit of information, it appears that they will be working at least in part from the late Ralph McQuarrie's original concept art possibly for some spacecraft and environmental designs such as the painting he did of the Death Star battle above. It makes sense to use the ideas that evolved into the imagery that is known now the world over.

In March, Lucasfilm announced that Star Wars: The Clone Wars was winding down it's production on the series : "While the studio is no longer producing new episodes for Cartoon Network, we're continuing production on new Clone Wars story arcs that promise to be some of the most thrilling adventures ever seen." It's unclear at this time if these will be shown by Disney, if they will be Web-Exclusives or Direct to DVD/BD content.

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