Star Wars fans are always hungry for more content from the galaxy far, far away, which leads me to wonder if in a few years we will see the launch of a new animated series set in The Old Republic of the Star Wars universe.
Let us take a brief look at what is going on in terms of Star Wars television productions at this point.
Star Wars: The Clone Wars
So far we have word of work being done on Season Five and Season Six, but no hints on a Season Seven. It seems likely that they could go to a Seventh Season but I have my doubts whether or not they will go beyond that. The shift to larger story arcs (3-4 episodes) means that conceivably they could extend the life of the series by taking up less time in terms of months and years per season. 5-7 story arcs per season set close together takes up little time on the timeline. Lets say TCW wraps up at the end of Season Seven in March/April of 2015.
Star Wars: Detours/Squishies
Star Wars: Live Action Series
Set in the Dark Times era between Episode III and IV, this series is currently on hold with scripts (third draft) written for 50 hours of episodes. But production costs are currently prohibitive and we are looking at 3-4 years until the show likely goes into production. Lets be optimistic and say we get production beginning in 2014 and Fall premiere in 2015.
The Old Republic
The end of TCW would lead nicely into the Live Action Series, but I believe there would still be room and appeal to a Old Republic animated series. If a TOR animated series where attempted, I would love them to go for the realistic style employed by Blur Studios in their cinematic trailers for TOR game. We are seeing the licensing department push TOR in the publishing line at Del Rey, as well as at Dark Horse comics. It would make sense to produce a TV series to coincide with the game to promote subscriptions to and the long term success of the MMO. In turn if you launch the series, say two years after the game launches you will have a hardcore built in audience that will be hooked on the story of the game and will latch onto the TV series strongly.
TCW is an animated series that works for both adults and kids, it sounds like Detours will skew younger in terms of its target audience, so it makes sense to provide an alternative Star Wars show for the more mature audience.
The success of a TOR series could also encourage Lucasfilm to pursue potential animated adaptations of EU material and stories down the road in other potential animated series or films set in the Star Wars universe,.
This Star Wars fan is all for more animated action.
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I think its pretty much a cetainty that we will get a new animated Star Wars series when TCW is done. No way would Lucasfilm spend that much money and resources to build up an animation department with the level of quality present in “Darkness on Umbara”, and not continue to use it. The Detours series doesn’t really sound like it has as long a life span as a TCW type show, it’s a limit to how long you can parody SW on aregular basis.
ReplyDeleteI doubt we will ever get a “big” Star Wars series that looks different from TCW though, they have way to many character models to not continue to use them. I think its important to remember that it took a long time before we got more than two new character per. episode, building a library of animated characters costs a lot apparently. It would be a huge letdown after the now epic Clone Wars series if we had to spend the first two seasons of a new series with only small scale stuff, because they had to start from scratch.