Highly-Anticipated Star Wars Movie Becomes Disney+ Show — Report

[Paul Farquhar]

With Thrawn returned, it would be quite reasonable to use elements from the Heir To Empire trilogy, such as locating a lost fleet, building a new clone army, the fall of Coruscant (which I believe does not appear in the sequel trilogy), Rukh and his homeworld, etc. Clearly, many of the characters involved, especially on the Lightside team, would be different.

 

[Reynard]

You know what I really want, tho? A remastered Obi Wan Series. I could not believe how small the budget was. I thought both MCGregor and Christensen were great in it and it had lots of potential. I enjoyed it but it was still less than it could have been.

 

[Dire Bare]

Could Filoni write & produce a new Star Wars series based on Heir to the Empire, weaving in characters and plots from existing Star Wars shows?

Hell yeah, I don't think that is problematic or difficult at all.

Obviously, the story wouldn't be a strict interpretation of Heir to the Empire, but that's okay. Filoni can draw from the original Thrawn trilogy and the newer Thrawn trilogy, as well as from the Mandalorian and Ahsoka.

Color me excited! Hope this works out!

 

[MarkB]

With Thrawn returned, it would be quite reasonable to use elements from the Heir To Empire trilogy, such as locating a lost fleet, building a new clone army, the fall of Coruscant (which I believe does not appear in the sequel trilogy), Rukh and his homeworld, etc. Clearly, many of the characters involved, especially on the Lightside team, would be different.

I feel like Rise of Skywalker kinda already did the whole "hidden fleet" thing to death, they'd have to put a serious new spin on it.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I agree it couldn't possibly be HtoE, but disagree about Filoni. I'm quite pleased with all his SW work, to varying degrees. Some of his shows are my favorites in the whole franchise, certainly better than all the newer films (except Rogue One) IMO.

I love his animated work but every live action show he's made has been a disappointment to me. Mandalorian started strong and got weaker season-on-season. Ahsoka was just deeply mediocre and not a story well-told at all (so unlike his animation).

Andor also really ruined things for me in that it showed me how good SW could be. That recontextualized Filoni's live-action work very negatively for me. Hell even the messy-as-hell Acolyte showed Filoni's fight scenes are basically C-grade. The best Mandalorian action doesn't remotely compare to the best fight scenes in the Acolyte (same for Ahsoka).

I'm not a hater. I'll watch the next seasons, but unless they start improving or I hear incredible things about a new show, that's it.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I get it. The source could be unreliable. I just thought it would be interesting to discuss the possibility of a HotE story on screen today. Have we missed our chance? Could new leadership at Lucasfilms change the direction of Star Wars or is it stuck?

For the actual HotE story with pregnant Leia and so on, that you referenced? You missed that chance in 2014 when the books got fully decanonized. And realistically it never was a chance at all because Lucas didn't hate the books but also didn't value them as canon and thought he could do better.

We probably will see a broadly thematically similar deal with Thrawn trying to take over the Galaxy, but which all the details of are very different.

A change of leadership will make no difference to whether we see stories like this. It may make a difference to whether we see actual quality productions like Andor. I don't find the claims that Filoni "hated" Andor to be credible, he's outright said it was good, but it's clearly, from the way he's talked about it when asked "not for him", and he also, oddly, seems to believe the audience for that is limited, which is weird, because by all measurements, it's one of the most successful things SW has done, and easily the most successful (both in viewership and critical acclaim) SW TV show.

 

[MarkB]

For the actual HotE story with pregnant Leia and so on, that you referenced? You missed that chance in 2014 when the books got fully decanonized. And realistically it never was a chance at all because Lucas didn't hate the books but also didn't value them as canon and thought he could do better.

Yeah, for all we can say that the Thrawn trilogy got written out when Disney turned the EU into Legends, it really started 'way back when the prequel trilogy came out and clones didn't work the way Zahn envisioned them.

If I were to reimagine it at this point I'd maybe have the lost fleet be Separatist vessels that couldn't be made to work without a massive supply of battle droids, until Thrawn came up with a way around that.

 

[GreyLord]

It would not be a BAD thing if they conflicted directly with the Sequel Trilogy. In fact, enough people have disliked them, and they have caused enough division, that out and out ignoring them would not necessarily be a bad thing.

That said...there's not much in Heir to the Empire that would conflict with the Sequel Trilogy. Nothing in the Sequels say that Leia and Han didn't have other children. Nothing says that Luke never had romance, got married, met someone else, converted others to be jedi, or myriads of other things that happened in the EU. We just know that he started a Jedi Academy of sorts (which did happen in the EU). The closer we get to the Sequels...sure...there may be conflicts...but Heir to the Empire happens far enough in the past that there's not a ton that actually conflicts with the Sequels.

I'd say it would actually be easy to make Heir to the Empire and with a few tweaks include the cast of Rebels, Ahsoka, or whoever he wants without actually doing anything to change the story of the Sequels if he wanted to.

On the otherhand, going a new direction where the Sequels never occur, are a different timeline (and Rebels opens up that possibility), are a fever dream, etc...may actually be a decent idea at this point. Find some way to unify and unite a divided fanbase would probably be one of the best things they've ever done since...well...since Spiderman: No Way Home (uniting all the Spiderman/Amazing Spiderman/Homecoming fans into one film group...that was one heck of a way to jumpstart the cinema's again after the Pandemic nigh killed them).

It could also be relatively easy to draft Asoka into them if Filoni wanted to, or even more likely, stray a bit and bring the Rebels cast into it with slight tweaks to the story.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

It would not be a BAD thing if they conflicted directly with the Sequel Trilogy.

It would though, from Disney's perspective, and from an IP perspective. As soon as you do that, you have to start making major decisions about canon revisions and whether canon even still exists, and if it doesn't, that will actually piss off a lot of SW fans more than the ST ever did.

Plus Filoni is serious canon-guy and there's just no way.

In fact, enough people have disliked them, and they have caused enough division, that out and out ignoring them would not necessarily be a bad thing.

It would be, especially as you're making a huge assumption about movies all made incredible amounts of money and got seen by huge numbers of people, and despite supposed "dislike", moved insane amounts of merch, and further, some elements of which (Kylo Ren, for example), continue to move huge amounts of merch, which really undermines the claim that they're so disliked as to be delete-able. I mean, even if they made a Kylo Ren/Ben Solo movie now, they'd make fat stacks of cash on it.

Further, literally you're just running the same line that people did re: the PT in the mid-late 2000s. "Nobody likes them, they can just ignore them!", but neither Lucasfilm nor Disney agreed, nor would it make sense to.

Filoni particularly did kind of the exact opposite of what you're suggesting, and what people suggested should be done re: the PT, which is, instead of deleting or ignoring it, he nuanced and complicated it, added a whole ton of extra stuff to it, and kept adding until it started working better. Unclear if he'll do that with the ST, but an Heir to the Empire type series could easily be part of that, continuing filling in the space between RotJ and TFA just as the Clone Wars stuff filled in between TPM, AotC, and RotS, and Rebels did between RotS and ANH. He's already doing that with Ahsoka and The Mandalorian even.

Find some way to unify and unite a divided fanbase would probably be one of the best things they've ever done since...well...since Spiderman: No Way Home (uniting all the Spiderman/Amazing Spiderman/Homecoming fans into one film group...that was one heck of a way to jumpstart the cinema's again after the Pandemic nigh killed them).

You're not going to do that by deleting the ST, dude. That's just wild. Again, the way Filoni rehabilitated the PT was to nuance and add to it, not to ignore or delete it.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

As the meme says, there is always time travel.

But yeah, I reckon it highly unlikely, and would be extremely unpopular.