There was Star Wars stuff at WonderCon, too!

The official blog has a roundup/transcript of Steve Sansweet’s panel, which started off with the Celebration Japan announcement (CJ? HA!) The rest of the first part is Steve talking to The Force Unleashed assistant producer Brett Rector, who confirms a few pesky rumors… Including one about the big dude himself. (Vader, not George. Sorry.) The second part skims a bit to an appearance by Seth Green and Matthew Senreich, who talk Robot Chicken. And part three, with all the juicy Clone Wars goodness!

Today in The Clone Wars

IMAGE: Clone helmet

The Clone Wars announcement: Aftermath!

IMAGE: The Clone Wars

Well, by now you ought to be aware of last night’s big news: The Clone Wars is making a stop at theaters in August before airing on TV this fall.

New info: Warner Brothers will be releasing the film.

The press hopped on quickly, with Empire, Sci-Fi Wire, Entertainment Weekly, and BusinessWeek among those running the story. The Associated Press may or may not jump on the bandwagon before production starts in earnest on tomorrow’s papers… Even TFN finally posted it. (I wonder how many times that article will get updated by August?)

As for your general internet reaction, initial io9 and Metafilter commentors are less than impressed. Oh, lapsed fans, you so cranky… Poor babies. There there. Remember, you don’t have to give him money.

The Clone Wars: It’s a movie and a TV series!

IMAGE: The Clone Wars

USA Today: Clone Wars feature film, coming in August, leads into TV series. The series itself will follow, airing on the Cartoon Network and TNT.

StarWars.com has a few more details, including new stills and the first in a series of web-only documentaries. Naturally, there are the requisite t-shirts.

Variety has yet more details: The movie will run about a hundred minutes, and the only original actors reprising their roles are Anthony Daniels and Matthew Wood. George is executive producer, but it was directed by Dave Filoni, written by Henry Gilroy, Scott Murphy and Steven Melching, with Catherine Winder producing.

More than 30 episodes are “already produced,” whatever that means. (Almost done? Various stages of completion? Totally ready to go?)

Fan reaction to the announcement tonight has been generally squeeful, and as is the way of our people, a Livejournal community has been created for dedicated discussion of the series.

Speaking of dedicated, we now have a category just for The Clone Wars, though it only goes back to C4 at the moment. The catch-all SWTV is getting a bit crowded.

Clone Wars news out of Germany, Samuel L. Jackson is up to voicing animated Mace

Another week, another toy convention. AICN reports from the Nuremberg Toy Fair:

Finally STAR WARS: no doubt, it has still the Force. The new action figures and Lego looked fantastic. And for us Europeans it was great to got the confirmation that CLONE WARS ANIMATED movie – the first three parts of the new tv-series – will indeed be shown in our theatres in September as well – so not only in England. That will give a huge boost to all the toys that will be released this year, guaranteeing the future of that (or any other) brand or franchise.

Nothing we haven’t heard before, but at least the reports seem to be consistent…

Meanwhile, Samuel L. Jackson told MTV he’s ready and willing to revisit Mace Windu for the series. Make the call, George!