IGN has Eric Goldman’s interview with Greg Weisman today, where he talks about Rebels, visiting Lucasfilm, and working with Simon Kinberg and Dave Filoni.
He praises the yet-unnamed writing staff and “phenomenal cast,” praises Leland Chee and Pablo Hidalgo and even the dreaded c-word:
Describing the approach to Rebels and the widespread potential audience, Weisman said, “We’re all very dedicated, and we know this show is going to be canon, so we take that responsibility very seriously. We know that on the one hand there’s an audience who’s going to be watching this that knows everything there is to know about Lucasfilm canon and knows beyond that tons of stuff from the Expanded Universe, which may or may not turn out to be canon once Lucasfilm decides what is official and what’s not. So we want the show to work for that group, the most extreme fanboys out there.”
On the show itself, the Rebel Alliance “doesn’t exist when we come in,” he says, continuing:
This is about how the Rebel Alliance came to be. So once the Rebel Alliance is, that’s pretty much where the show ends. I don’t know how many seasons that is. It’s not like we’ve nailed that down like, ‘Oh, we’re going to exactly X amount of seasons.’ But if all goes well, that’s the goal: we go from the origins of the Rebel Alliance to the point where the Rebel Alliance is, which would lead in essence directly into A New Hope. That’s the goal, to fill in that gap between those four or five years.”
As for the cast, they’re taking a different approach from how far-flung The Clone Wars came to be. Weisman says they have one “focus” character and five others to make a core cast of six. (Presumably this includes Kanan and Chopper, but let’s hope two of them are the women he talked about in an earlier interview.) Though it will focus on those six, the cast will expand, and “the show gets bigger and bigger in scope.”
We can also expect “some incredible guest stars,” both familaiar and unfamiliar names.