Lucasfilm announce STAR WARS: REBELS TV series

Lucasfilm have announced a new Star Wars CGI TV series is being made, entitled Star Wars: Rebels. This series will be set between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope and will be heavily influenced by Ralph McQuarrie's concept art for the original trilogy of movies.

Not from the TV series, but a logo from some upcoming novels.

The production team is a mixture of veterans of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, other animated projects and some people involved in Episode VII and the other new live-action films.

The setting is telling since Lucasfilm and Disney had previously indicated that all new Star Wars media going forwards would be set in the Episode VII time period, but clearly that's no longer the case. This may renew hopes that the abandoned LucasArts game 1313 might yet be salvaged, and Obsidian's planned new Star Wars RPG might also be in with a shot of getting made. Most interesting is the fact that Rebels seems to be set in the same time period as George Lucas's planned Star Wars live-action TV series, only with more of a rumoured emphasis on the Rebel Alliance rather than on bounty-hunters. Whether this means that Rebels replaces the planned live-action show, or if that will still reach the screen later on, is also unclear.

Star Wars: Rebels will debut in the autumn of 2014 with an hour-long special on the Disney Channel.

RIP Ralph McQuarrie

Ralph McQuarrie, the concept artist who designed much of the look of the original Star Wars movies, has passed away at the age of 82.


McQuarrie played a key role on the original Star Wars film, designing R2-D2, C3-PO and Darth Vader. He also created the final look of Chewbacca (drawing inspiration from a John Shoenherr painting for, of all things, a George R.R. Martin short story). He had a cameo appearance in The Empire Strikes Back. Many years later, he was asked to work on the prequel trilogy but declined.

McQuarrie also worked on Raiders of the Lost Ark, Stark Trek IV: The Voyage Home, *batteries not included, E.T., Jurassic Park, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Cocoon, winning an Oscar for the latter. He also played a key role as a concept artist on the original 1978 TV series of Battlestar Galactica and did some work for the aborted Star Trek: Phase II TV project before it was abandoned.

George Lucas had this to say about his colleague:

"I am deeply saddened by the passing of such a visionary artist and such a humble man. Ralph McQuarrie was the first person I hired to help me envision Star Wars. His genial contribution, in the form of unequaled production paintings, propelled and inspired all of the cast and crew of the original Star Wars trilogy. When words could not convey my ideas, I could always point to one of Ralph's fabulous illustrations and say, 'Do it like this.'

"Beyond the movies, his artwork has inspired at least two generations of younger artists—all of whom learned through Ralph that movies are designed. Like me, they were thrilled by his keen eye and creative imagination, which always brought concepts to their most ideal plateau. In many ways, he was a generous father to a conceptual art revolution that was born of his artwork, and which seized the imaginations of thousands and propelled them into the film industry. In that way, we will all be benefiting from his oeuvre for generations to come. Beyond that, I will always remember him as a kind and patient, and wonderfully talented, friend and collaborator."