Star Wars: The Disney+ Empire Strikes Again and Again and...

Well, a lot going on here.

Rangers of the New Republic, a new Original Series set within the timeline of @TheMandalorian, is coming to @DisneyPlus. pic.twitter.com/YKlWJpvhAW

— Disney (@Disney) December 10, 2020

Ahsoka, a new Original Series, starring @RosarioDawson and set within the timeline of @TheMandalorian, is coming to @DisneyPlus. pic.twitter.com/ZojpCkhPS7

— Disney (@Disney) December 10, 2020

“Everything I did, I did for the Rebellion.” Andor, an Original Series set in the Star Wars universe, is streaming in 2022 on #DisneyPlus. pic.twitter.com/q2IT2qzEeR

— Star Wars (@starwars) December 10, 2020

Hayden Christensen returns as Darth Vader, joining Ewan McGregor in OBI-WAN KENOBI. The Original Series begins 10 years after the dramatic events of Revenge of the Sith, and is coming to #DisneyPlus. pic.twitter.com/9WR2npRUkk

— Star Wars (@starwars) December 10, 2020

A sneak peek at Star Wars: The Bad Batch, an all-new animated Original Series from Lucasfilm Animation, coming soon to #DisneyPlus pic.twitter.com/V0jQc4XNIe

— Star Wars (@starwars) December 10, 2020

Star Wars: Visions, an Original Series of animated short films, celebrates the @StarWars galaxy through the lens of the world’s best Japanese anime creators. Coming in 2021 to @DisneyPlus. pic.twitter.com/syUmiL7SdI

— Disney (@Disney) December 10, 2020

The galaxy’s favorite scoundrel, Lando Calrissian, will return in Lando, a brand-new event series for @DisneyPlus. Justin Simien (@JSim07) is in the early stages of developing the project.

— Disney (@Disney) December 10, 2020

Leslye Headland brings a new @StarWars series to @DisneyPlus with The Acolyte. “The Acolyte” is a mystery-thriller that will take viewers into a galaxy of shadowy secrets and emerging dark-side powers in the final days of the High Republic era.

— Disney (@Disney) December 10, 2020

Lucasfilm Animation is teaming up with Lucasfilm’s visual effects team, Industrial Light & Magic, to develop a special @StarWars adventure for @DisneyPlus, A Droid Story. This epic journey will introduce us to a new hero guided by R2-D2 and C-3PO.

— Disney (@Disney) December 10, 2020

dear fucking god

Plus Taiki Waititi's thing and Patty Jenkins is doing this:

pic.twitter.com/e3N00xCr5i

— Patty Jenkins (@PattyJenks) December 10, 2020

sadlol

All of the upcoming Star Wars/Lucasfilm projects #DisneyInvestorDay pic.twitter.com/ipP8uTxdbT

— DiscussingFilm (@DiscussingFilm) December 10, 2020

I'm skeptical they'll manage to give each of these a distinct feel rather than following the proven Mando formula. I think I'd be more excited if there was one or two series in development rather than a half dozen.

Remember when 15 or 16 years would pass without a new Star Wars thing, that was pretty tight in retrospect

Well, depending on the media. That Timothy Zahn book in 1991 kickstarting the run of novels and the various 90s computer games were keeping interest pretty high.

I remember as a young fan in the 80s/early 90s being convinced there'd never be another proper Star Wars thing...

xpost

average convo in a Gen X household in Dec

"bought $100 worth of Star Wars toys"

"oh, the kids will love that..."

"right....the kids..."

I hope, completely and unironically, that the Rangers of the New Republic series does nothing but remake old CHiPs episodes, and somehow stars Estrada, Wilcox, Dorn and Chris Pine's dad.

Yyyyyyyyeah, mandalorian is one thing as a fun retro treat but fuck if I’m clearing out a fucking mall size space in my memory palace for this avalanche of trademarks.

misread one of the projects as Star Wars: The Bad Bitch

wait the Obi-Wan show is gonna have Hayden Christiansen as Darth?

wtf - JEJ is still gonna do the voice, presumably, so....are they just paying him to walk around in the costume?

xp Me too

Supposedly he's retired from doing the voice, but I don't know if that was just a rumor or not. At the least there's been no handoff as with Chewie yet.

oh god if Hayden does the voice

Darth "Stoned" Vader

this is a controversial opinion, but I think this is too much star wars

A Lando show is just too good, man i loved me some Solo.

Star Wars: The Bad Bitch

yeah gonna be a lot of demands for this now - Sy Snootles finally getting her due

this is like when as a teenager I went to a bookstore in the 90s and saw dozens of star wars books. Suddenly something I like becomes way too much and not something I want to keep track of.

The Star Wars franchise should just be non-stop announcements of things that are never delivered.

every single one of these things is going to feature a puppet baby version of a preexisting character

Baby Palpatine

I can't believe this shit

Man, even as a huge fan of Star Wars, this is too much. And I really miss the days when this was all slowly revealed, not spat out in one massive investor call data dump.

Baby Jabba

Baby Palpatine

This would ... rule?

I'm pretty cool with just continuing to treat the pre-Disney material and the Filoniverse as the only SW stuff worth paying attention to. Granted, wrt the latter that would still have me on the hook for half of these new shows.

I feel like there's a very real chance "The Acolyte" will have baby Sheev.

there's gonna be a movie about how Sheev conceived his son

called Palp Fiction

*Friction

Sheev's Gotta Have It

Droid Six

The Emperor's New Groove

Imperial Bedroom

Sidious Kinky

holy shit a+

Why would anyone come onto a thread to express negative thoughts about Disney properties

http://i.pinimg.com/originals/c6/3f/33/c63f33f578bb17f7be8f96d6f9822b61.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yix_9g_Ob74

Kind of interesting article (with a minor spoiler about future plans, if you haven't finished The Mandalorian yet): https://variety.com/2020/tv/news/disney-star-wars-marvel-studios-1234866986/

I'm just going to post this now because I can see that I'm going to get a lot of requests -

Yes, Rian's SW trilogy is still on. No dates or timelines because he has other projects going on, but it is happening.

THAT IS ALL I KNOW ABOUT IT. 😁😁😁

— Sariah Wilson (@sariahwilson) February 16, 2021

Not sure where this goes (it’s not tv or movie related, but relevant): https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/star-wars-high-republic-novels/2021/02/22/adbb4338-72e3-11eb-85fa-e0ccb3660358_story.html

The incredible cast includes Ewan McGregor, Hayden Christensen, Moses Ingram, Joel Edgerton, Bonnie Piesse, Kumail Nanjiani, Indira Varma, Rupert Friend, O’Shea Jackson Jr., Sung Kang, Simone Kessell and Benny Safdie. pic.twitter.com/VltHs5Aw6r

— Star Wars (@starwars) March 29, 2021

that is a pick names out of a hat cast there

Hayden C. unrecognizable in that pic

Next SW film should be a Sean Baker joint anyway

Appreciating the jokes that it’s just Drive but in space

My first thought was "surely there's a house rule that says you can't call something Star Wars: Star Something", because it sounds clumsy. I mean, imagine writing "Ryan Gosling stars in Star Wars: Starfighter as starfighter pilot Starr Krendo".

But there was a Star Wars: Starfighter video game in 2001. It was called Star Wars: Starfighter. So perhaps it's okay.

In fact I learned something! Google used to give you exact results if you enclosed something in quotes. But now it doesn't. However if you enclose the string in quotes and click tools -> all results and switch it to verbatim, it does it back again! I learn that there was also Star Wars: Star Pilot, which was a Phantom Menace tie-in book by Dorling Kindersley. And an officially-licensed boardgame from 1987, Star Wars: Star Warriors. So it's not forbidden, just uncommon.

Famously Dorling Kindersley had the official licence for Star Wars books in the late 1990s but lost a fortune because no-one was particularly keen on Phantom Menace tie-in media. Somewhere out there is a tribe in Africa dressed from head-to-toe in unsold Phantom Menace pyjamas that were unsold and eventually donated to charity.

depressing to see Gosling in a Star Wars movie

I can not lie i saw shawn levy and assumed it was ryan reynolds

“Yes i can see why the girl from anora would not want to be in a movie with ryan reynolds…” i nodded to myself.

Meantime new animated series incoming next year:

https://lumiere-a.akamaihd.net/v1/images/star-wars-maul-shadow-lord-swcj-hero-container-mobile_81561452.jpeg?region=0,0,1600,900&width=960

depressing to see Gosling in a Star Wars movie

Literally saw this the day after learning he was attached (as producer) to a "Killer Klowns from Outer Space" reboot.

started out in the mickey mouse club, aged into the star wars club

Enjoy an updated map!

https://www.starwars.com/star-wars-galaxy-map

https://jasonfry.substack.com/p/about-that-new-star-wars-galaxy-map

Wait, we're getting Jaxxon this time out? Bring it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rr2UMWHgNqk

More casting news for the Gosling movie

https://deadline.com/2025/08/star-wars-starfighter-cast-1236500048/

Honestly a black and white film would kinda rule.

i have a hard time getting excited about this? not to be a snob about Levy bc I like some of the stuff he’s done … but idk if I’m really clamoring for his take on SW

it just feels more like a cynical swing into “ok fine lets get the popcorn movie guy”

What are the odds a special colour cut gets released two months after it tanks?

It's not literally going to be in black and white. As cool as that might be, there is no way Disney is going to greenlight a black and white Star Wars flick at this point in history.

Looling forward to seeing Simon Bird as a rugged rogue sassy smuggler wait no I mean neurotic droid.

Shawn Levy is popular w actors bc he lets them do whatever the fuck they want

Reads boring af castwise. Sorry (?)

the Starfighter thing was written by the guy who did the tv show Banshee? lol

whaaaat? i loved that show!

it's perhaps the most entertaining unserious performative masculinity show I've seen, having watched it this year, and I mean that completely positively

what if this movie is Drive but with the tone of Banshee

then i will watch the hell out of it!!

Banshee is basically just a prestige tv version of Billy Jack — my platonic ideal of pulpy genre tv. so good

I don't think I would say Banshee is prestige, but it's definitely a serial story. It's prestige if, like, Oz counts as prestige

maybe thats the wrong word, i meant “boutique streaming service”

you guys say you like genre, you say you like pulpy, you say you want a lowbrow entertaining starwars well Solo exists and it’s GREBT

i liked Solo!

🙂‍↕️🪇

Meantime...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SuOQbmC9PQk

cancelled my sub innit

but yes there are ways

I like it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHWlvwu8t1w

The one I saw before "Send Help" looked like one of those goofs that was going to turn into a cellphone use PSA.

Looks fun from the trailer, I trust Favreau to restore the balance from the show's third season in that respect - will see in the cinema. Nice to see EMBO in the 'flesh', plus Zeb. No Armorer would be a shame. Hope Sigourney has enough substance to her role.

And I gather that's one Martin Scorsese voicing the four-armed dude in the kiosk.

It sounded like the guy who does the voice acting for a similar (if not the same) four-armed guy from a recent Star Wars video game series to me, but maybe that guy just sounds Scorsese-sque

It's Scorsese, Lucasfilm confirmed it in a press release.

ah, just saw an article about the same. nice!

Don't know if anyone's watching Maul but I like it -- if it feels like a minor side-story amid the larger arcs, I'm kinda fine with that, but I'm especially impressed with the animation. I do like how each individual show has its own riff on the general approach they've established all this time, and it's a very painterly style, with some impressive backgrounds in particular.

The animation is great and the story moves well.

I've never liked the fact that they brought Maul back at all. He definitively died in the movie and I don't buy whatever story they told to say he didn't. But my kids like him a lot and they are very into the new series so I'm enjoying it through them.

It's one of the biggest stretches in a franchise full of 'em but Sam Witwer did a solid job in voicing the character and does so again here. (I still think they missed a trick in 1999 by showing the double-bladed saber in the trailer -- THAT would have been a major surprise at the time.) Also, kinda loving Wagner Moura and Dennis Haysbert in this! Gideon Aldon too, really.

Yeah love everything about the new show except the underlying premise… but that would also apply to his stretches in Clone Wars and Rebels too.

I think it was basically
CLONE WARS WRITERS: Too bad that the cool character in that first prequel died
GEORGE: Oh he's not dead he just fell down a thing with half a body. He crawled out of a garbage heap later.
CWW: Uh sure George, I guess we can use him now

Ok, the Maul show was very good and the finale was terrific.

The animated segment of the Disney+ Star Wars universe continues to be much much better than the live action (Andor excepted obvs)

Looks fun from the trailer, I trust Favreau to restore the balance from the show's third season in that respect

And guess what: that's exactly what The Mandalorian and Grogu is. That was a pure pulpy delight, a proper self-contained story that didn't lean too deep on lore and used just enough backstory to work from there. I was honestly delighted, it was nice to see a Star Wars movie just being entertaining.

I must say I’m def more encouraged by yr review, Ned. Seeing it this weekend!

Yeah this was uncomplicated fun, a condensed version of the series on a bigger scale, minor quibbles aside, no real need for more than that. Embo and the Anzellans certainly did not disappoint.

https://theonion.com/report-decision-not-to-call-film-the-baby-yoda-movie-to-cost-disney-900-million/

I knew this would ruin them. I'm sick and tired of them gaslighting us into believing that's not Baby Yoda on the screen.

This sucked

Felt like a video game, like 30 minutes of material stretched to 2 hours