Club Jade

It’s brief, but TVLine has a report from the Disney Channel upfront yesterday:

Disney Channels Worldwide boss Gary Marsh also said the company is “working closely with LucasFilm, Kathleen Kennedy and director Dave Filoni (Star Wars: The Clone Wars) to explore new Star Wars content for our platforms,” to be detailed later this year.

It does echo the announcement from the other day, but any port in a storm. (via)

What would you like to see Filoni and company explore? Head beneath the cut for a poll!

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Yesterday’s announcement that Lucasfilm Animation will be wrapping up The Clone Wars with some bonus content but not a full sixth season, while preparing for a new series was not a big surprise, but it was still a sad piece of news for me and other fans of the show.

Stooge and I are both big fans and have a lot of thoughts and feelings about The Clone Wars and its winding down. So I asked Stooge to share his opinion and I’m tacking on my own reaction to this all, using Stooge’s points as a start. (more…)

The Clone Wars is joining its maker in retirement, we learned, even as he himself spilled the beans on the most important Episode VII casting news so far. (I do promise that I’ve spared you all the imminently predictable remarks about old actors, because they’re beyond tired.) All that, plus the usual suspects, beneath the cut.

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StarWars.com has confirmed yesterday’s report, more or less. Lucasfilm Animation is going to “pursue a new direction in animated programming.” This is intriguing:

We are exploring a whole new Star Wars series set in a time period previously untouched in Star Wars films or television programming. You can expect more details in the months to come.

As for The Clone Wars, they’re going to “wind down the series,” and continue production on “new Clone Wars story arcs.” So sounds like we haven’t seen the last of the series, even as it’s ending.

Looking at the announcement closely, they don’t call the “wind down” season six, but instead call it “bonus content” which means that probably we may not see the entire season’s worth of episodes, but simply several story arcs that are either the best material or the ones already furthest in the pipeline.

In the announcement, there’s a video with Dave Filoni discussing the future of the show, saying “the best is yet to come”, and brings out a long video clip of an upcoming story arc that focuses on clone programming, Order 66, and the return of the spidery Admiral Trench.

As for Detours:

Detours was conceived and produced before we decided to move forward with the new Star Wars trilogy, and in the wake of that decision, Lucasfilm has reconsidered whether launching an animated comedy prior to the launch of Episode VII makes sense. As a result, we’ve decided to postpone the release of Detours until a later date.

Well, not going to cry over that one, though I wouldn’t be surprised to see whatever’s been completed pop up as specials somewhere.

UPDATE: Apparently so.

Jedi News is reporting that ‘several sources’ have told them that the Star Wars animated series is at an end. Big Shiny Robot has heard much the same, and believes an official announcement is imminent.

The Clone Wars’ fate under Disney has been uncertain for some time now: Cartoon Network only had the rights to air it through season 5, and many expected – or hoped – that it would move to the Disney XD channel.

Disney has its annual upfront presentation of its networks’ programming for the 2013-2014 season on March 12, so this will be the right time for some news – either The Clone Wars will be on its list, or it won’t. If it isn’t on the Disney lineup, then hopefully we’ll have some announcement of what the future does hold for the show. While being popular, the show is fairly expensive to produce, and without George Lucas championing the show like a billionaire who does whatever he wants with his own money, it could be that the show’s budget (despite raising the bar on animation for a weekly TV series) could be working against renewal in the post-George era.

It’s not yet known what will happen to the completed episodes of what would be the sixth season: Jedi News believes a direct-to-DVD/Blu-Ray release of some sort is possible. Other sources indicate that an online distribution method such as through iTunes might be a possibility. With each production season creating a few more episodes than get aired in the broadcast season, and pushing into the next season for airing, there’s at least one story arcs that should be ready to go: The Clovis story arc originally slated for season five. We know that a lot of voice work has been recorded for season six, but knowing that it takes about a year for an episode to be produced from story to ready to air, it is not known how many season six stories made it out of the pipeline.

If this rumor proves true, a Clone Wars cancellation would be the second piece of major fallout from the acquisition. The 3D rereleases of Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith were ‘postponed’ in January. Also in the “no news is bad news” department, Star Wars Detours hasn’t been on the radar at all, with its Facebook page last being updated in November.

Still, with 5 seasons and more than 100 episodes, you can’t argue that The Clone Wars hasn’t had a good run.

It’s been almost a week since the season five finale of The Clone Wars, and there’s still a lot to talk about! You’ve probably already gotten my take on what transpired in those last few episodes (or last few minutes of the last episode, ‘The Wrong Jedi’), but there’s a lot of other good news and discussion out there, and I’ve picked out some of the best here. Again, here be spoilers.

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After seeing the The Clone Wars finale at Lucasfilm, and then watching ‘The Wrong Jedi’ again at home, there’s certainly a lot to talk about regarding what happened in that final episode of the season, especially with Ahsoka. This article will move into spoiler realms after the next picture, so go watch the episode if you haven’t done so already.

Also, Ashley Eckstein and Dave Filoni go behind the scenes with ‘The Wrong Jedi’ in the behind the scenes commentary. For more insight on the episode (and the whole finale arc), check out the Question and Answers segment from the Lucasfilm screening with Dave Filoni, Ashley Eckstein and Matt Lanter, recorded by Bryan Young for the Full of Sith podcast, episode XII (If you just want to skip to the Q&A, it starts around 35:10).

Spoilers from here on out! (including the comments)

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Welcome to the internet, world! Last week, the president made a geek gaffe, The Clone Wars wrapped up their fifth season… Or was is it done forever? We still don’t know, but there are spoilery tweets within.

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Ahsoka Tano goes on trial as the perpetrator of the Jedi Temple bombing in the final episode of Season Five of Star Wars: The Clone Wars on Saturday morning. ‘The Wrong Jedi’ is an amazing episode, with some big things happening so catch it as soon as possible to avoid spoilers!

In the preview above, Ahsoka faces questioning from the Jedi Council, while in the second preview (below), Anakin Skywalker tracks down Asajj Ventress in the Coruscant underworld for some answers. And there’s another tooka! Find out more what is in store for The Clone Wars with a twitter chat today with Ashley Eckstein, hosted by Christan Blauvelt at Hollywood.com. (more…)

Chancellor Palpatine returns to The Clone Wars in the final episode of the season with Tim Curry taking the role over after the passing of Ian Abercrombie. Bryan at Big Shiny Robot has the scoop on how Dave Filoni selected Tim Curry and has an exclusive preview clip that has Palpatine presiding over the trial of Ahsoka Tano, with Admiral Tarkin as prosecutor, and Padme as defense counsel. Apparently, there aren’t any trial lawyers in The Clone Wars.

Tim Curry is probably known best for his role of Dr. Frank-N-Furter from The Rocky Horror Picture Show, but has been doing a lot of voice work in the past twenty years, including on The Wild Thornberrys and Young Justice.

The info was first revealed at the Lucasfilm screening of the season five finale last Friday, but was one of those secrets asked to be kept. We’ll have more tidbits from the screening Q&A after ‘The Wrong Jedi’ airs on Saturday, wrapping up the finale story arc.