Warwick Davis will host the live portions from Pinewood Studios in London, though I would be shocked if Galaxy’s Edge doesn’t make an appearance somehow.
The first wave of products for the three big launches coming later this year – The Mandalorian, The Rise of Skywalker, and video game Jedi: Fallen Order – will all be in stores October 4, but this will be our first (official) look at some of them.
→ The latest batch of guestsare Ray Park (Darth Maul) and the voice of animated Anakin, Matt Lanter, and Rebels’ Tiya Sircar (Sabine Wren). As chance would have it, Lanter is the interview on this week’s Star Wars Show:
First excerpt from Battlefront II: Inferno Squad. The Christie Golden novel, a tie-in to the upcoming game, will be out in hardcover and eBook on July 25, or in a special deluxe edition available only at San Diego Comic-Con July 20-23.
Out today is Star Wars #32, or part 4 of ‘The Screaming Citadel.’ Head on over to your preferred comic vendor to find out why Han Solo is sporting Twilight-style vampire eyes!
June is pretty slim on book releases, but we do have a handful coming out in July, including the Battlefront II tie-in Inferno Squadron by Christie Golden. It drops July 25. I generally don’t cover games (for my own sanity, and thus yours) but it did drop a gameplay trailer a few days ago. Battlefront II itself will be out in November. (And yeah, I did put it on my personal calendar, so that may very well be the next time I mention it.)
In a bit of a surprise announcement, Disney’s toys-to-life game, Disney Infinity, which introduced Star Wars characters in its 2015 release of Infinity 3.0, is going to be shut down in June.
In line with the company’s quarterly financial report, Disney decided to end the popular game, which was first introduced in 2013, and shutter the game studio, Avalanche as the company moves out of game publishing and toward solely being a game-licensing company, much like when Lucasfilm shifted LucasArts out of making games and just into licensing games to companies like EA. Disney won’t be pulling the plug immediately, as there are a few more products coming out this month and in June.
On the plus side, those Disney Infinity figures that have already been spotted on clearance will probably get even more discounted at the retailers. Star Wars figurines include characters from the original trilogy, The Clone Wars, The Force Awakens and Rebels.
Here’s a bullet I’m glad we dodged back in the day: Jordan Maison at Cinelinx reports of an Episode VII game idea that was floating around Lucasfilm in late 2004.
Episode VII: Shadows of the Sith would have put you in the role of an adult Ben Skywalker,” Haden explained, “who was walking the line between the light and dark sides of the Force, unleashing new Force powers never-before-seen in games or movies as he investigated a new threat to the galaxy (a Solo…).
The now decanonizedBen Skywalker was born close to the middle of the New Jedi Order series, in 2001’s Edge of Victory: Rebirth. At the time the idea was in play, The New Jedi Order series had ended with The Unifying Force almost a year before, with Ben still a toddler. His next appearance was the Dark Nest trilogy, which began with The Joiner King in July 2005.
The Solo could have been either Jacen and Jaina Solo, or the offspring of either. (Jacen did have a daughter, Allana, who was born during the Dark Nest trilogy.) It’s possible this idea fed into Legacy of the Force, which did turn Jacen into a Sith, but given the state of Lucasfilm collaboration at the time and the broadness of the idea, I wouldn’t bet on it.
Note again: This was just a pitch/concept, which makes it an interesting might-have-been, nothing more.
The idea of Episode VII being a game just doesn’t sit right at all… But if the game had made it to production I doubt that would have remained the title. Still, it’s interesting to imagine what we might have gotten if this had been in play for the increasingly disappointing final years of the Legends novels.
Revealed today at StarWars.com, the cover for Battlefront: Twilight Company by Alexander Freed. The game tie-in comes out November 3, 2015, in the long drought (ha) between Force Friday and The Force Awakens. As it happens, the novel’s blurb quietly went up a few weeks ago and I never got around to posting about it, so here you go:
The bravest soldiers. The toughest warriors. The ultimate survivors.
Among the stars and across the vast expanses of space, the Galactic Civil War rages. On the battlefields of multiple worlds in the Mid Rim, legions of ruthless stormtroopers—bent on crushing resistance to the Empire wherever it arises—are waging close and brutal combat against an armada of freedom fighters. In the streets and alleys of ravaged cities, the front-line forces of the Rebel Alliance are taking the fight to the enemy, pushing deeper into Imperial territory and grappling with the savage flesh-and-blood realities of war on the ground.
Leading the charge are the soldiers—men and women, human and nonhuman—of the sixty-first mobile infantry, better known as Twilight Company. Hard-bitten, war-weary, and ferociously loyal to one another, the members of this renegade outfit doggedly survive where others perish, and defiance is their most powerful weapon against the deadliest odds. When orders come down for the Rebels to fall back in the face of superior opposition numbers and firepower, Twilight reluctantly complies. Then an unlikely ally radically changes the strategic equation—and gives the Alliance’s hardest-fighting warriors a crucial chance to turn retreat into resurgence.
Orders or not, alone and outgunned but unbowed, Twilight Company locks, loads, and prepares to make its boldest maneuver—trading down-and-dirty battle in the trenches for a game-changing strike at the ultimate target: the very heart of the Empire’s military machine.
Lucasfilm and ILM today announced that they’ve formed the ILM Experience Lab (ILMxLab) to create “immersive content” – aka virtual reality and such. Coming one day to a theme park or gaming console near you, probably!
Here’s a bullet I’m glad we dodged back in the day: Jordan Maison at 
Revealed today at 