And the first wave of Celebration guest announcements brings us a variety of voice actors: From Resistance, Christopher Sean, Suzie McGrath, and Scott Lawrence, who voice Kazuda Xiono, Tam Ryvora and Jarek Yeager. From The Clone Wars, there’s longtime Celebration vetern James Arnold Taylor (Obi-Wan Kenobi). There’s also Battlefront II’s Janina Gavankar and Skywalker Sound’s Matthew Wood, who voiced General Grievous.
Star Wars Celebration Chicago is being held April 11-15.
Bob Iger talks a great deal about the development of Disney+ and the business in-and-outs of the service in an interview with Barron’s. For our purposes, the relevant bit here is that they’re not going to make a Star Wars movie for it:
Almost every movie the studio makes is a $100 million-plus movie, and we’re not looking to make movies at that level for the service. We’re looking to invest significantly in television series on a per-episode business, and we’re looking to make movies that are higher budget, but nothing like that. We wouldn’t make a Star Wars movie for this platform.
This is pretty much a no duh kind of thing – and yes, io9 did that headline first, damn them – but it may have been on people’s minds after Solo. Still, given the rumors we’ve heard about the standalone movies that were in play, they might be better suited for TV anyway. On that note, Iger on the thinking behind doing Star Wars TV for streaming:
I guess we could have made the Star Wars series for ABC if we wanted. But the budget and what we’re spending on it and the nature of the material suggested it would be a perfect anchor for the new service. Because it’s a priority for the company, that needs to be reflected in the trafficking or the direction of where a lot of content goes. There have to be some subjective decisions made on where stuff goes because we have to feed this new beast.
Barron’s being a business-oriented publication, there’s a lot of nitty gritty in the article, but it might shed some light on Disney’s recent decisions.
He also says that the Galaxy’s Edge section at Disneyland will open in June, which is a bit more specific than the previous “summer.”
For Star Wars fans, one young reader book, three new comics and a trade collection are coming to stores this week. On Tuesday, January 8, the Flight of the Falcon series concludes with Pirate’s Price from Lou Anders and Annie Wu. Han and Chewbacca meet up with the notorious Hondo Ohnaka – or so claims Hondo. There’s an excerpt up at StarWars.com.
Sure enough, Disney shared a new look at Galaxy’s Edge on Tuesday. There’s not a whole lot here those who’ve been paying attention don’t already know, but I doubt we were the intended audience. Anyway, there are some new visuals here, so let the hype continue!
Jon Favreau’s Christmas gift to the fandom was a confirmation that droid bounty hunter IG-88 – or at least a very similar model – is to appear on The Mandalorian, as first reported by Making Star Wars. This show is sounding more and more ’90’s Dark Horse all the time…
Ludwig Göransson will write the score for the upcoming Star Wars TV show The Mandalorian. His credits include Black Panther, Creed, Creed II, Venom, Fruitvale Station and he’s also worked with Donald Glover.
The Mandalorian will debut on Disney+, which is expected to launch late next year. The series is filming now.
“Words fail to express how surreal and humbling it feels to be invited into the Star Wars universe,” Göransson said. “I am deeply grateful to Jon Favreau and Disney for this opportunity and to John Williams for raising the bar so high with his iconic, intrepid scores — they will never be matched. In these next months I hope to honor the tradition of Star Wars’ musical landscape while propelling The Mandalorian into new and unchartered territory. And I will try to remember that there is no try.”
Making Star Wars has some details on Episode IX filming. Ducks! (Not a spoiler. Well, maybe a spoiler.)
Also, a reminder that while there’s (always) speculation, we have zero legitimate reasons to believe we’re going to get a look at Episode IX this month. That said, tomorrow is the one-year-out mark. I’d wager that our next bit of news will probably be the film’s title: The Force Awakens was announced in November 2016, and The Last Jedi in January 2017, so we’re in that range. Maybe J.J. will drop us another picture. But actual footage? Unless it’s something for Force for Change, don’t count on it it.
Yes, it’s hard to wait. But it’s also nice to have a December off from the madness. I dunno, maybe I’ve been blogging this stuff for too long.