Full Series Future Star Wars animated projects to be produced by Disney TV division not Lucasfilm.

No, the license ends in 2013 (end of the year I believe). Blue Sky Disney is a solid source for goings on inside Disney, and as far back as December they were stating the license would expire in 2013 and future comics would be handled by Marvel, but we would not see any Marvel Star Wars releases until 2015.

http://www.blueskydisney.com/2012/12/a-marvelous-dark-horse.html

Yeah, this is working out great...

Yancy

 

Some of your recent posts have some of the most off the wall I've ever read here.

First, you don't know that about the ST. There's no way you could possibly know this to be true, though I imagine for you, even if these turned out to be the best thing since sliced bread, if you ever do watch the films, it will indeed feel this way, because you've already convinced yourself that it will be so. Worse, you've been so hurt over the cancellation of TCW, that you've allowed anything you've posted relating to the ST to be so dripping in negativity and so much doom-and-gloom conjecture, that it honestly feels as if you've lost all sense of objectivity or even reality with these issues.

To your second point, well, that's strictly a matter of opinion, and quite frankly, I disagree.

 

Sounds good, hlc, thanks for the update.

 

I don't think anyone can say the Disney deal has been a good thing yet, and that's because we haven't seen anything they've produced yet. It's too early. It all hinges on whether all these cancellations are worth it.

We won't find that out for another couple of years.

 

I think it hangs on an awful lot more than these few cancellations, but I agree, taking the longview is generally the wiser move and it will be years before we begin to have an accurrate picture of events.

 

I agree, 07jonesj, at this moment we simply cannot know exactly what Disney has in store with regards to the future TV series and other materials leading up to and during the release of Episode VII. I was initially disappointed by news of the cancellation, but now I'm taking a more "wait and see" approach. There is a lot of Star Wars material promised in the near future, and right now we're simply seeing a shifting of priorities. I just hope that the bonus content becomes accessible in the near future and that what stories are finished provide a fitting conclusion to the series. I can certainly live with the plentiful EU material during the wait for the ST and the new series.

Ready, Star Wars is, for a new series. To let go of TCW, a greater challenge, it will be.

 

Bigshinyrobot was told this by a Lucasfilm spokesperson:


Concerned over reports that the remaining content from The Clone Wars would not be made available to fans, a Lucasfilm spokesperson contacted me to assure you that the extra content will absolutely be made available to fans.

http://www.bigshinyrobot.com/reviews/archives/50078

 

Well, that's good to hear.

 

Forget Disney asking Alec Baldwin to come talk to Lucasfilm Animation - they probably just got Vince McMahon to do it:

 

TCW included!

 

A spokesperson who wouldn't give a name or go on the record. That's a confirmation of nothing. That's more a "distract them with a shiny object" move.

Wake me when Lucasfilm makes an ACTUAL statement. And even then, considering Disney's actions of late, I'll believe it when I see it.

 

They won't need to be bound by it. Disney is never going back to the PT era. Those stories are done, done, done. Whether Disney will ever do anything that contradicts TCW is a moot point - after the last of the "Bonus Material" is released, Disney won't ever spend a dime on telling new stories from that era ever again.

 

BTW, it would be my guess that all of Lucasfilm's Northern California properties - basically, the Ranch and the Presidio complex - will be shut down or handed over to Pixar as expansion space within a year or two.

 

Well, we can't say for sure. I actually raised this question in the Lucasfilm boards. Skywalker Ranch is huge, and a grand majority of it is under conservation easements, ensuring that future developments won't take place there. We don't what real estate properties legally belong to Lucasfilm, and which ones may belong to Lucas himself. There could very well be additional holding companies involved. Tracts of land have continuously been purchased and added throughout the decades, so who knows what the legal status of various properties associated with the Ranch are.

Yes, Lucas obviously owned and sold Lucasfilm and all of its components, but as an individual, he may have legally owned various properties that were not legally associated with Lucasfilm. In fact, I'm sure he did/does, but who knows.

And why would the Presidio complex be shutdown? LucasArts and Industrial Light and Magic are based there, and while it sadly looks like LucasArts will be shut down, I don't think Disney would do the same with ILM. After the Star Wars brand, I'd say ILM is the most valuable Lucasfilm asset, and it is one that will continuously be raking in cash on a yearly basis. Are you thinking they're going to sell ILM, or just move them it from the Presidio?

 

Don't count on it. Disney's obvious priority is to make money, lots of it. Why not re-visit the CW era if there's money there? I don't know where your confidence comes from.

 

I used to work for a retail company and I remember the store manager coming in to speak to the new employees and explaining that the highest priority is, "to extract as much money from customers as possible, by legal means."

I loved that he didn't sugar coat it by saying the first priority is customer service or something like that.

It's not different for Disney, which is why I think it is completely baseless to assume that they are going to kill the PT or OT eras. There's no money to be made in restricting all the merchandise that can be mined from those eras and films.

If keeping a Lucas Animation team is redundant to the assets Disney already has, then there's going to be layoffs. They are going to do what is profitable. It made sense for LucasFilm as an independent entity to have an animation department. It makes less sense when they are now owned by Disney who probably has much more extensive tools at their disposal for animation.

 

Disney would shut all that down because it would be easier and cheaper to move it to LA where the rest of Disney is, and consolidate most of it into existing Disney operations. Yes, they'll keep the ILM and Skywalker Sound brands - they're too valuable to dump - but it really has never made that much sense for them to be hundreds of miles away from the center of the moviemaking action. As for the LFL properties, Disney could play "good corporate citizen" (not to mention dump excess property, with its attendant tax and insurance liabilities) by donating the Ranch to the state or a nonprofit conservancy as a nature preserve. I wouldn't be a bit surprised to see that happen, and it would be hard for either George or the neighbors to object.

My guess - and I'll admit, it's just a guess - is that the Ranch will end up as some sort of nature preserve or park, the Presidio complex will end up as Pixar spillover space, and the rest of the former LFL operations will be shut down or moved to LA, with all of this happening over a 2-5 year timeframe.

 

Because Disney wants to look to the future and tell its own Star Wars stories. They want fans, especially young people, to think of the characters and stories of the Disney era when they think of Star Wars. They want the money, and they want control.

Order 66 has come to Lucasfilm. It's a purge. The New Order is here, and the old ways will be swept aside.

 

Not surprising but disappointing all the same. The work LFL Animation did on The Clone Wars puts Disney TV to shame. Though I did like Tron Uprising.

 

I just can't see Disney not making guaranteed money in other eras than the ST because it's been done by LFL/Del Rey/Dark Horse before. The ST is going to be set in an era already covered, and they're making that. Making their own show in the PT or OT eras is something which I don't think any money-hungry Disney exec is going to pass on. I think you're thinking wishfully here, to be honest. Nothing is safe now that Disney has bought LFL.

 

Whether it's right, or fair, or not, the conventional wisdom is that the prequels sucked. This means that, fair or not, Disney sees the whole era as damaged goods, and they're dumping it in favor of a fresh start in a new era whose stores they have creative control over. If they're going to sink cash into telling Star Wars stories (and they will), they're going to sink it into telling their own.

tl;dr - Disney thinks the PT era is old and busted. The ST is the new hotness, and that's where they're going to send all their (considerable) resources.

 

I'm going to pull an Alexrd and ask for a source on that one. It's all speculation at this point.
I don't deny a focus will be on the era surrounding the ST, but to say they're going to leave the PT era behind forever seems ridiculous to me.

 

There are still more episodes out there, I can't see them being vaulted forevermore when there's still profit to be had. And there's a new TV series en route. Hopefully it'll be good.

 

The source is the fact that they've just more or less taken everything associated with the PT behind the barn with an ax and killed it like a Thanksgiving turkey. If Disney was interested in telling more PT-era stories, they wouldn't have just fired basically every prominent person involved in telling them for the past half-decade.

 

Not only will the EU continue to cover other eras, I'd be extremely surprised if all these "standalone" films Disney is considering creating are set in the same era.