The last few days for Disney has been nothing but great press with the releasing of trailers for Solo and Infinity War, which were followed by yesterday’s announcement from Lucasfilm that a series of Star Wars films would be produced and written by Game of Thrones creators D.B. Weiss and David Benioff. This is not the only major announcement pertaining to the multi-billion dollar science fiction franchise that has recently been disclosed to the general public. Disney CEO Bob Iger has confirmed that multiple television shows set within the Star Wars universe are going to be put into development and will be exclusively released on the upcoming Disney streaming service.
The CEO held his First Quarter conference call with investors, and during this call he made it clear that not only are Weiss and Benioff going to write and produce a series of Star Wars films but that he had a handful of televisions series set within the Star Wars universe.
Disney is developing “not just one but a few Star Wars series” for next year’s Disney SVOD service, says Bob Iger. “The level of talent will be rather significant.”
— Ben Fritz (@benfritz) February 6, 2018
JUST IN: Disney Chairman & CEO @RobertIger says there are “not just one” but “a few” @StarWars series in development for the small screen.
— Clayton Sandell (@Clayton_Sandell) February 6, 2018
Again, it is to be clarified that these planned shows are not going to be films like the Weiss/Benioff production, but rather productions that will debut exclusively on Disney’s SVOD service. This means that there are currently no plans for the entertainment company to begin producing direct-to-streaming movies in a similar fashion to what Netflix has done with notable in-house productions such as Bright and Cloverfield Paradox. Either way this is welcome news that has come on the heels of a previous announcement that a live-action series was already in production and set to debut in 2019. This is not the first time that we have received word that a potential show set in a galaxy far, far away was going to be in the works. In 2015, it was speculated that Disney was going to make use of it’s previous partnership with Netflix to stream their potential Star Wars shows on there in a similar fashion to what it has done with it’s Marvel Cinematic Universe projects such as Daredevil and The Punisher. That plan has obviously been scrapped as a result of Disney’s plan to launch an exclusive streaming service that will feature all of their content which means that every Disney, Marvel or Star Wars film will be pulled from Netflix once the service launches and will not be featured on any other service. It is currently unknown if they will be animated or live-action but there definitely is more room with the upcoming series finale for Star Wars Rebels. Iger commented that the streaming service will have less content than other streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime Video because it’s branded content is better and more appealing to a wide range of demographics such as the average moviegoing family.
What do you think of this news? Are you excited for more Star Wars content? Let us know in the comments section down below!
