Comic publisher Dark Horse has partnered with Random House to distribute titles. Given that both houses have the rights to Star Wars, this could certainly prove to be an interesting and beneficial agreement. Press release below the cut.
Category Archives: Star Wars
Rebels, Live Action, and Episode VII Rumor Roundup
And here we go.
First up, the big Rebels rumor right now is that the series may have a timeline placement. Making Star Wars (via the Bleeding Cool podcast) puts it around 8 years after Revenge of the Sith. Is this true? Who knows, but perhaps clarification is coming out of New York Comic Con next week.
@JustinL81 Let’s put a pin in this, and bring it up again after the NYCC panel. 😉
— Pablo Hidalgo (@infinata) September 29, 2013
Meanwhile in Episode VII land, Jedi News’ insider claims that Pinewood Studios will be handing the Cinderella stages over to Lucasfilm in November.
Rounding things out, a live-action Star Wars rumbling. According to Blue Sky Disney (via Club Jade), the success of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D has Disney thinking about reviving the long-in production, long-on-the-backburner live action Star Wars television series. The trick? It would have to be retooled to be less dark so it could air on ABC.
UPDATE: Apply your grains of salt, but it’s rumored today that Saoirse Ronan, Ben Kingsley, and Sullivan Stapleton have read for Episode VII parts.
J.J. Abrams appears on PBS to talk television and Star franchises
Kotaku profiles LucasArts’ collapse
The shuttering of LucasArts still stings for a lot of fans. Many hold Disney accountable for closing the venerable game studio, but did problems for the developer begin before the sale? According to a Kotaku profile by Jason Schreier, LucasArts was in trouble years before Disney came into the picture.
Over the last five months, I’ve talked to a dozen people connected to LucasArts, including ex-employees at the company’s highest levels, in an attempt to figure out just how the studio collapsed. Some spoke off the record; others spoke under condition of anonymity. They told me about the failed deals, the drastic shifts in direction, the cancelled projects with codenames likeSmuggler and Outpost. They told me the stories behind the fantastic-looking Star Wars 1313and the multi-tiered plans for a new Battlefront starting with the multiplayer game known asStar Wars: First Assault.
All of these people helped paint a single picture: Even before Disney purchased LucasFilm, the parent company of LucasArts, in November of 2012, the studio faced serious issues. LucasArts was a company paralyzed by dysfunction, apathy, and indecision from executives at the highest levels.
It may not have been just 1313 and First Assault that wound up meeting untimely demises either:
In news that will certainly crush anyone who enjoyed LucasArts-branded adventure games, the team at LucasArts Singapore was working on a remastered version of the classic point-and-click game Day of the Tentacle, according to three people familiar with that project. Like the special editions of the first two Monkey Island games, released in 2009 and 2010, the remastered Day of the Tentacle would be pseudo-3D, with remade background art and cut-scenes redone to run at 30 frames per second…
…The list of cancelled projects goes on and on. There was Smuggler, a game designed for cross-platform multiplayer that would let you play as a customizable character within the Star Warsuniverse, smuggling and trading between Facebook, tablets, and consoles.P
There was Outpost, the Star Wars take on Zynga’s FarmVille that would let players build empires, one click at a time.P
There was Death Star, the iOS game in which you’d get to control your very own version of the Empire’s iconic space station.P
There was the online service that would be LucasArts’ very own version of Origin, EA’s network for distributing games and servicing online multiplayer. Like Origin for EA, this LucasArts-branded network would help the company distribute Star Wars games and in-app purchases. According to one person familiar with plans for this network, it would have launched alongside Star Wars: First Assault, which would have had some sort of microtransaction store.
Shortly after LucasArts closed, I cautioned fans not to blame Disney. The anger was understandable, the studio closure came right on the heels of The Clone Wars getting cancelled. From my outside perspective, it looked as if LucasArts had been in trouble for years and issues had cropped up almost a decade earlier. This piece by Kotaku lends more to the idea that the company had merely been on life support from Lucasfilm for some time.
Be sure to read the entire Kotaku profile, there’s a whole lot more there that paints a much clearer picture that the problems that befell LucasArts come from within, not from Disney.
Review: Star Wars: Legacy #7
Legacy continues today with the release of Issue #7. Rest time is over as Corinna Bechko and Gabriel Hardman set our heroes off on their next adventure in pursuit of Darth Wredd. But honestly, after that cliffhanger at the end of the last issue, who wants to waste any more time with this introduction? On with the review!
This review contains mild spoilers for the issue.
Compare and Contrast: Leia in 2013
2013 was a big year for Leia in the Expanded Universe. First up, we got the Brian Wood written Star Wars comic, which Bria and myself were less than impressed by. Today we got Razor’s Edge by Martha Wells, which we were significantly happier with. Why the difference in reactions? Simply put, it boiled down to how Leia was used and characterized. To see what we mean, head below the cut.
Review: Razor’s Edge
It’s been hard in recent years to find a characterization of Leia Organa that just feels right.  It’s also been hard to find a story about our Original Trilogy heroes where the stakes are high (but not ludicrously so) and where the galaxy doesn’t have to be put completely back together again at the story’s end or, in other words, a fun adventure story.  Martha Wells delivers on both of these counts in Empire and Rebellion: Razor’s Edge.  It’s a book where the story is important enough to warrant several hundred pages but it’s also a book that will make you laugh one page, smile another, and then perhaps duck your head and hide a tear for Alderaan.  (Or maybe that last one is just me.)
Seth Green: Detours is just on hold
Dunc over at Club Jade spotted a Reddit AMA with Seth Green. While many of the questions asked had to do with other projects and shows Green has been involved with, someone was kind enough to ask him about the state of Detours. His answer:
So there’s actually been quite a bit of talk about this, but Detours is just on hold currently. We have 39 finished episodes and around 62 finished scripts. But that entire show was created before the decision to make more Star Wars movies, so our show (which was created by George Lucas) is an animated sitcom in the world of Star Wars, so we had a lot of conversations with Kathleen Kennedy about Star Wars in not just the next 3 years but the next 30 years, and when you’re in as privileged a position as we were to be able to work on Star Wars content with its creator, you get a great sense of responsibility to the whole. I was introduced to Star Wars as a child and it was without any ironic or comedic lens, so I saw Darth Vader as scary, and I saw all of those messages very very clearly. We didn’t think it made any sense, in anticipation of these new movies coming out, to spend the next 3 years with an animated sitcom as 3 generations’ of kids first introduction to the Star Wars universe.
I’ve had a lot of parents approach me in the last few years where they showed Robot Chicken or Family Guy Star Wars before they showed them regular Star Wars. The writers on Robot Chicken and I are seeing this a lot. The same way we were introduced to classic music through Bugs Bunny or Tom & Jerry, kids are taking our ironic interpretations of He-Man or other pop culture icons and never having the opportunity to meet them sincerely. It’s a really bizarre thing to wrap your head around, and because I’ve witnessed it firsthand, it made me more thoughtful about what we were putting it out.
I do feel that Detours is a timeless bit of entertainment. Media distribution is changing so quickly, so dramatically, that can you even imagine what distribution of content will look like in 5 years? In a day and age when Netflix series are nominated for the top accolades TV has to offer, what is to say what it will look like when the new Star Wars movie comes out? So Detours can sit on a shelf until the Star Wars movie comes out without losing any of its lustre, because what we’ve created is very funny, very smart and like I said before, timeless.
So are there immediate plans for releasing Detours? No, not yet. But Green is hopeful that it’ll be out there at some point.
Review: Star Wars: Legacy #6
After a whirlwind past couple of issues, Legacy #6 feels like a deep breath as our heroes regroup. That’s not to say there isn’t any action since, as the cover advertises, it’s a Sith vs Sith battle but Ania Solo’s very bad day finally has come to a close. Corinna Bechko and Gabriel Hardman follow up on their excellent first arc with a transitional issue that’s a good read nonetheless.
This review contains mild spoilers for the issue.
Bria’s ‘Razor’s Edge’ cosplay featured on Suvudu
Our own Bria was featured in an interview over at Suvudu to discuss cosplay and one of her latest costumes: Leia from the cover of Razor’s Edge.
What inspired you to create this costume?
From the minute I saw the cover for Razor’s Edge, I knew that I wanted to do the costume. I’ve said to my friends in the past that so many of the book covers with Leia bore me because they almost all show her in her film costumes. This was absolutely not something she wore in the films but it works so well for not only her character but also for the role she’s filling within the book as a leader of the Rebel Alliance on a vital mission. She gets to wear an outfit that shouts ‘this is meant for action!’ without automatically having to wear a catsuit. I had an idea for how I wanted to make the costume and one day, I challenged myself to complete the costume in 12 hours because I loved the look of it that much.
For the rest of the interview and for more photos, head over to Suvudu.