Lit Lucasfilm Writing Group

This is now canon.

 

We're gonna need more thumbtacks...

 

I saw Anakin duel Vader on screen in ROTS: The Video Game. It's canon that Anakin dueled Vader.

 

Borderline zombie-thread resurrection post, however, we now know a bit more as to how the story group works, at least with Marvel (from the Marvel Star Wars comics editor):

http://jordandwhiteqna.tumblr.com/p...input-does-the-story-group-have-on-your#notes

"How much input does the Story Group have on your Star Wars storylines? Have they given you guys notes, a bible, lists of characters, species, locations, ships, and organizations?"

They have given us lots of notes, and will advise us if we are looking for characters, vehicles, organizations, or what not.
No master lists or bibles, though.

I still don't know if the "Story Group" is really a "mastermind idea hive for the future of the Star Wars universe" or "continuity gurus meeting". Honestly, I think the answer is somewhere in between.

 

this thread lol

 

Ah hah, almost a year later, here's more details of who formed the initial story group!

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/inside-star-wars-writers-room-846856

It was around Christmastime 2012 when Michael Arndt, Lawrence Kasdan, Simon Kinberg, Pablo Hidalgo and Kiri Hart converged for the first time in an office at Big Rock Ranch in Marin — the 1,000-acre spread George Lucas built next to his beloved Skywalker Ranch — to carry out an initial brainstorming session. Over the next month, they began creating the framework for Episodes VII, VIII and IX as well as such spinoffs as Rogue One.
Their credentials ran the gamut. Arndt is an Oscar-winning writer (Little Miss Sunshine, Toy Story 3), while Kinberg is the tentpole maven behind such scripts as X-Men: Days of Future Past and Mr. & Mrs. Smith. Hart leads Lucasfilm's story group, while her colleague Hidalgo is the man responsible for keeping the franchise's labyrinthine mythology consistent and is said to know more about the Star Wars universe than Lucas himself. Kasdan served as the group's only original Star Wars trilogy alum (he wrote The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi as well as Raiders of the Lost Ark).

(important part as to initial conception of canon, which is for this form.....)

The first session lasted a week, with days typically beginning with a group breakfast at the Inn at Skywalker Ranch and wrapping around 5 p.m. The quintet relied upon only the previous six movies and the Star Wars: Clone Wars TV series as official canon, ignoring the decades-worth of stories from hundreds of assorted novels, comic books and video games.

 

Star Wars: Clone Wars, not Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Genndy Tartakovsky's series confirmed as canon!

 

This should really go in the TFA & The EU thread but I'm too afraid to go in there for fear of spoilers.

io9 interviews J.J. Abrams

The whole thing is worth a read, but the parts of note:

18 months? I realize there was a near-infinite number of directions to take the plot and immense pressure not to screw it up, but that seems like an incredible span of time.

Between this and BigAl6ft6's link, it's interesting to note that Kasdan was involved long before he ended up writing the script directly. I had been under the impression he was brought in after Arndt's version was toast.

 

Kasdan was brought in by Kennedy and Lucas before the Disney sale. He was given his choice of movies and he chose the Han one. He only got directly involved with Episode VII later.

http://www.wired.com/2015/11/lawrence-kasdan-qa/

 

I'm really curious as to how this Story Group works. Do they read everything that's going to be published? Can they edit and/or veto materials that do not fit with the current canon? How do they keep track of what begins part of the canon (pretty sure they use Wookiepedia lol)

 

Leland and Pablo pretty much are Wookieepedia--just, y'know, without the gross parts.

 

This is a really interesting thread. Thanks for the new info guys!


Sent from my R8 unit

 

I'd love for the story group to publish a complete timeline every year or so including EVERYTHING that is canon

 

That'd be cool. I don't know if Wookiepedia has something like that, but I assume you mean an order of events and not books/movies/TV?

 

Something like TCW timeline that was published after the series ended but shows the place of all the films/shows/novels/comics/short stories, a mean feat I know but surely that's what the story group is for

 

An official one seems unlikely to be published by Lucasfilm, they prefer to keep things vague to give them wiggle room in the future. The closest you'll probably get are the mini timelines in the Del Rey books. I and a few others have compiled our own timelines, though, and if you're interested in that kind of stuff you should keep up with this thread: http://boards.theforce.net/threads/the-nu-continuity-timeline-source-list.50019912/

Here's mine: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-yi4vYekyhTTs-vLIJKsRzwYw9SY0M2dvrPbN-NF3Es/edit?usp=sharing

 

Can wesa have a thread change to the word "writing" to "story" group so this can be the All Story Group, All the Time thread please, oh great mods?

 

Here we go, direct quote from Kennedy on dropping the EU & how they're doing it now with the Story Group (basically, she kinda blamed Lucas):

http://www.slashfilm.com/star-wars-standalone-movies/3/

George allowed that expanded universe to really go its own way. And some of it was extraordinary and really well done. And some of it, less so. But it didn’t follow any narrative structure and we felt with all of the development that was going to go on in all these different areas, [that] would make things too chaotic. And we didn’t abandon it because we thought something was wrong with it, we abandoned it because it had gone in too many different directions without any oversight by George, and that’s something we’re trying to rectify. So the concept of the expanded universe is similar to what we’re continuing to do, but within a bit more structure.

...What’s brilliant about what Kiri Hart is doing inside the story department is, we’re really looking at everything we’re doing. Our story group looks at and gets involved with animation, anything we’re doing with games, anything going on with theme parks, anything thats happening with publishing, even certain things inside DCP. We are very closely tied to any of the narrative storytelling in those divisions because that does have to make some kind of sense. We don’t want something heading off in some direction that completely undoes what was setup in another story.

 

From a practical perspective, I can't argue with their reasoning (you can't pump a movie per year into a universe that was, at a fundamental level, never designed to accommodate sequels; the pre-ROTJ timeline is another kettle of Quarren) but it will forever be a bummer, no matter how good the replacement universe turns out to be. C'est la vie.

Honestly there was probably a reboot in our future anyway--the ST just forced their hand by five or ten years.

 

So wasn’t sure where to put this, but what do we think about a Story Group member saying this (please actually read for context):

https://boundingintocomics.com/2020...tt-martin-star-wars-canon-is-all-fake-anyway/