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The Book of Boba Fett headlines Star Wars storytelling releases this month! We’ll check in on upcoming developments in all 12 story categories today… Punch it!
Department of Corrections: In the episode, I mentioned last year’s Disney Investor Day from December 2020, but called it “2010” instead. Whoops!
Even though there’s always not notable news in all 12 of the categories, we’ll check in on them all in this episode. Here’s what they are…
Movies
Live-action TV
Animation
Books
Audiobooks
Short Stories
Comics
Virtual Reality
Video Games
Experiential (Events/Conventions/Parks)
Merchandise
Streaming
Transcript
Star Wars 7×7, Episode 2707. Hey, happy December to you. And because it’s the first of the month, it’s time to check in on Star Wars storytelling and what we have to look forward to in the coming month. Punch it!
Hey, Rebel Rouser, I’m Allen Voivod. This is Star Wars 7×7. Your daily dose of Star Wars joy, and thank you so much for joining me for it. So as we do on these monthly episodes, there are twelve categories of Star Wars storytelling that we check in on each time. And there’s not always news in all of the twelve categories, but we’ll at least give them a nod just to make sure that we keep them on our radar.
As always, we start with movies, and we’ve talked in previous episodes in November about Rogue Squadron and the fact that it seems to be delayed. But the details on it are a little fuzzy. On the one hand, it seems like a scheduling thing. And on the other hand, there are rumors about the dreaded, quote, unquote creative differences happening. And still, the calendar for Disney releases has not been updated to pull Rogue Squadron off its December 2023 release date.
So yeah, that’s still pending, even though all the Hollywood trades are saying, yeah, it’s off the schedule. Well, I don’t know what schedule they’re looking at. Whatever it is, it’s not a public one. Let’s put it that way. Now, assuming that we are still looking at a December 2023 release of Rogue Squadron, one of the things we’ve been doing is comparing the timetable of the development of The Force Awakens to where we are with Rogue Squadron.
And so we’ll look back at December of 2013. There are great details about this in the Art of the Force Awakens book. And in that month, the concept designers have been churning out thousands upon thousands of sketches and paintings and ideas and whatnot, and they were getting ready for a holiday break. J.J. Abrams came in and pitched the story of Episode VII, the untitled-at-that-time Episode VII. He and Larry Kasdan, at that point, had taken over from Michael Arndt and were developing a new script.
So that draft, the first draft of The Force Awakens was submitted in December of 2013. With Rogue Squadron, there’s already a script in place as far as we know. So that’s handled, which is great. And one of the Hollywood trades said that casting was not yet under way before this whole delay business happened, or at least before the reports of the delay happened. And for The Force Awakens, for what it’s worth, they had an open call for casting the roles of Rey and Finn, but they had not begun casting in earnest and wouldn’t do so until 2014.
So we’re still in line for a potential December 2023 release date for Rogue Squadron. With The Force Awakens, they were not going to start principal photography until the early summer of 2014. So yeah, there’s still time to stay within the timetable as long as they can work out whatever the scheduling situations are. So that’s where we’re at with Rogue Squadron, about that movie specifically, but also looking at it from the framework of the timetable for The Force Awakens.
Now, let’s move on to live action storytelling, the series that are coming out on Disney Plus, and this obviously is a huge month because the Book of Boba Fett debuts on Wednesday, December 29. And as I mentioned yesterday, we don’t yet know if they’re going to double up on day one, but if they are, they will announce it ahead of time. It’s not going to be a surprise on December 29, they will say so in advance. And we know now that it’s a seven episode series which will take it into February, regardless of whether they double up on that first day.
Coming after that is very likely the Kenobi series, as we’ve talked about here on the podcast, that the Kenobi series is going to debut before the Andor series. That’s the only thing we got a preview of on the Disney Plus day that happened last month. Granted, it was the same sizzle reel that was presented to investors in the Disney Investor Day in December of 2020, but there was no new Andor stuff in there. So yes, once again, every reason to believe that Kenobi is coming first, that series will be in post production right now.
The Andor series is in post production as well.
Mandalorian season three is currently filming right now. So that’s fantastic. And we’re anticipating a late 2022 release for that. Then you get to the Ahsoka series and we’ll talk more about the Ahsoka series in tomorrow’s episode, actually, but really quickly. There was one thing in the Empire magazine situation where Kathleen Kennedy seemed to suggest that Ahsoka was coming out in 2022, and I don’t think that’s quite right.
I mean, it just doesn’t seem like the timetable works for that. Dave Filoni, also mentioned in that feature article, is currently writing the Ahsoka series right now. So yeah, it seems like they’re not going to be able to begin principal photography on this until sometime in 2022. Seems very unlikely that they would be able to get it out the door until after the debut of Mandalorian season three. So you would imagine that once Mando season three runs its course, which would probably bring it into late winter early spring of 2023, that the Ahsoka series would debut after that.
Let’s move on to animation now. And right now, there’s only one thing in animation that we know about going on, which is season two of The Bad Batch that is currently in production right now. So one thing that had come up a while back was a conversation with Matt Lanter, who did the voice of Anakin Skywalker in the Clone Wars series. And also, you get a little bit of him in Rebels as well with Darth Vader’s appearances in there. But he has said that he is not done with Star Wars animation projects, and you get the idea that maybe he could show up somewhere else.
It might be worth mentioning that in season two of Star Wars Rebels, Darth Vader made a couple of appearances there, and that was all very exciting and what not. And so it would be kind of interesting to see Darth Vader appear in season two of The Bad Batch. Certainly he didn’t make it for season one. But you can kind of imagine a situation where at some point Darth Vader is going to cross over into this series. Every time they’ve had the opportunity to do something like that, Lucasfilm has done it. So it would not be a surprise to see Matt Lanter being involved in The Bad Batch in season two.
Okay, next we’ll move on to books and it’s pretty light for the month of December. There’s only two books coming out. One of them is in that Be More series from DK Books. So previously there’s been a be more Yoda and to be more Laia and it’d be more Orlando and to be more Vader. Well, surprise, surprise. The new installment is a Be More Boba Fett book.
There’s also going to be a Jedi Artifacts book from Insight Editions. This is a kids book, actually, although the description says that it’s a great gift for Star Wars fans of all ages. And looking at the list of inserts, it’s hard not to agree with that. So this whole Star Wars Jedi Artifacts package includes a Jedi quote booklet; a Jedi Order pin (the logo of the Jedi Order); a spaceship model, which is a Jedi Vector from the High Republic; a customizable lightsaber sticker sheet; a Star Wars Rebels sticker using in-world art from the show, so you imagine it’s probably some of Sabine’s stuff; Obi-Wan Kenobi journal pages, which is described as an in-world insert. Makes me think of the Star Wars comic series, the first series that Marvel did where there were these sort of interlude stories where Luke found a journal of Obi-Wan Kenobi and got to hear and read stories about what Kenobi was doing during his time in the desert. There’s also an in-world Jedi Mosaic sticker, which is the mosaic art shown in the movies, and two lightsaber key chains, they are Ahsoka Tano’s lightsabers.
Next on the list is audiobooks, and this is a quick one because there are no audiobook releases happening in December. So there you go, that takes care of that one.
On the short story front, we’re supposed to be getting an issue of Star Wars Insider sometime this month and there will be a High Republic short story in there. It will be a part one of the story by Cavan Scott, because Cavan and Justina Ireland are trading stories so Justina is finished in the last issue of Insider. And so Cavan Scott will be getting the next one.
On the video game front. December 14 is the big date that we’re all keeping an eye on. Because as we’ve discussed in previous episodes of the podcast, the whole Bring Home The Bounty merchandising thing that’s going on, on that particular Tuesday, December 14, they’ve had various icons representing the different weeks, and they don’t always correspond to the stuff that they’re releasing.
But in this particular case, they have a video game controller as the icon for that week. And so it seems rather unusual compared to all the other helmets and faces that they’ve shown. So yes, the belief is that there’s going to be some sort of big video game thing happening on December 14. And so we’re keeping an eye on that one.
And since we’re talking about Bringing Home The Bounty, we may as well mention the merchandising category. At this point, there’s still stuff being released. And as I’ve been watching the week-by-week debuts for Bringing Home the Bounty, there hasn’t been a heck of a lot in terms of product descriptions that give us clues into the backstories of characters or narrative storytelling or anything like that. But I’m still going to be keeping an eye on that. And I imagine that once we get closer to the release of the Boba Fett, we might get more targeted product drops. And so yes, we may have more information come, but the Merchandising thing is still happening, and it goes all the way through December 28 with the Bring Home the Bounty campaign.
As for virtual reality, at this point, doesn’t seem like we’re going to have any other big news this year, but we’ll keep an eye on it all the same. And for live events, there still hasn’t been any update over the past few months for Star Wars Celebration Anaheim in 2022. So that’s kind of mysterious and surprising. So yeah, we’ll keep an eye on that and see how that goes.
Then, of course, there’s the whole Galactic Starcruiser thing that’s opening in March. There have been some updates that we’ve talked about on the podcast last month, so that’s all fantastic. And maybe we’ll get more previews of what happens in Galactic Starcruiser. That might be good fun. But for now, that’s basically what’s going on for the live experience front.
Then we have the streaming category, and the streaming category is just basically anything they add to Disney+ that isn’t a regular live action release. So right now, we don’t have an indication that something new is coming in that regard. But who knows, we might get some kind of holiday surprise. It’s been known to happen.
And the last category is the comics category. This is going to be kind of a banner month. As far as comics go, there are 13 new issues being released, so it’s going to be Bounty Hunters 18 and 19; the Darth Vader series 18 and 19; Star Wars, the flagship title 19 and 20; Doctor Afra 17; and also Star Wars Adventures number 13.
And then there’s a Crimson Reign debut. So this is the second part of a trilogy. The first part of the trilogy was War of the Bounty Hunters. Now Qi’ra’s story is continuing in this five issue limited series called Crimson Reign. It doesn’t seem like this is going to be a crossover event the same way War of the Bounty Hunters was, although one of the upcoming Bounty Hunters ongoing series issues mentions Crimson Reign. So there’s kind of a suggestion that there’s some crossover, but not officially, because the cover art that they’ve shown doesn’t show any sort of Crimson Reign tie in kind of thing or anything like that.
And then for the High Republic comics, well, the Marvel High Republic series is dropping issue 12. The IDW High Republic Adventures is dropping issue 11 and a first annual issue also. And then for Marvel, the Trail of Shadows miniseries is dropping issue number 3 of 5.
So there you go! That’s everything that we know about Star Wars storytelling coming up in December of 2021. And when news breaks on those things or anything else that we weren’t expecting, we’ll cover it here on the show this month.
So it just remains for me to say thank you so much for joining me for this episode as always, and may the Force be with you, wherever in the world you may be.