Executive producer Simon Kinberg talks Rebels with Entertainment Weekly today. He touches on quite a few things, but no real bombshells… Or are there?
Thematically and politically, it goes to some dark places. But for the tone of the show we took our cues from the original movies, which had fun and adventure and swashbuckling with emotion and grounded human characters. We took all our cues from the original films. Obviously there are slight tonal differences between New Hope, Empire and Jedi. But I think the closest intended voice of the show is A New Hope. So there are places where we get into darker backstories, there are places we see how cruel and malevolent the Empire can be, but for the most part it’s a fun and character-driven story.
On Vader or Palpatine appearing:
I don’t think I’m allowed to answer that. I can say that wherever possible we would want to use the original talent.
On the heroes:
There’s a lot of new characters in the show. The prequels were centered around the origin of familiar characters, there’s a lot of new characters in this show. The main characters are new characters.
On Pablo Hidalgo, “the resident Star Wars genius” and bringing in things from the Expanded Universe:
He will say there’s a cool cantina in this comic book from 1994, or a cool creature that not all of us know. He will bring that stuff to us. Or we’ll task him we’re trying to create a muscle for this villain with a cool backstory. Sometimes it will be a character or a planet we don’t know about. Instead of being just an Easter egg, sometimes it will turn into an a whole episode.
Begin your reading between the lines…