Star Wars News Round Up: May 2021

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The Bad Batch Debuts On Disney+ on May 4th



A whole host of new Star Wars content arrived on Disney+ on Star Wars day including the 75 minute debut of new animated series, The Bad Batch (review). Also released were the Simpsons short ‘Maggie Simpson in The Force Awakens From It’s Nap’, Star Wars Biomes and Vehicle Flythroughs. The surprise hit for me was Biomes, a slow tv drone style fly through of planets such as Hoth, Tatooine and Mustafar, which I have played more times than I can count already, my only complaint is that at 20 minutes it’s too short, I would love more episodes!


Star Wars Celebration 2022 Moved Forward



On 12th May it was announced that Star Wars Celebration 2022 was moving from it’s previously announced August to May 26th-29th. The convention had originally been scheduled for June 2020 but had been moved to 2022 due to the pandemic. It is unknown why the dates were changed again, and the change will be bad news for some fans but good news for others.


Dave Filoni Promoted to Executive Creative Director



Eagle eyed fans spotted a change to Dave Filoni’s job title on the Lucasfilm website, indicating a promotion to Executive Creative Director, a title he shares at the company with the legendary Doug Chiang and John Knoll. Lucasfilm then confirmed to IGN that the promotion had actually taken place last year but the website had only just been updated. While we don’t know what difference this will make to what Dave Filoni does, giving more responsibility to someone who spent so much time with George Lucas and created Rebels, Resistance, The Bad Batch and worked with Jon Favreau on The Mandalorian can only be good for Star Wars going forward.


Rangers of the New Republic ‘Not Currently In Active Development’

It was revealed in Variety’s article about Dave Filoni’s new role, that Rangers was not currently in active development. This of course led to a lot of online speculation and clickbait headlines suggesting the show was cancelled. To me this simply says that it’s not currently being worked on, not necessarily that it is cancelled, there is a lot happening at Lucasfilm right now on Disney+ alone. The Book of Boba Fett filmed, Andor and Kenobi are currently filming, and Mandalorian season 3 and Ashoka are also coming. That’s ALOT, and it wouldn’t surprise me if Rangers of the New Republic were on the back burner, especially in the wake of losing it’s lead, so taking some time to adjust would be a good thing in my eyes. Personally I’d love to see Carson Teva (Paul Sun-Hyung Lee) take a lead role, and bring in Hera Syndulla and her, by then, grown up son Jacen Syndulla.


New High Republic Comic Series Announced



New mini series Trail of Shadows written by Daniel José Older was announced on the High Republic Show on the Star Wars YouTube channel on 26th May. The new Marvel series will have a mystery detective flavor and be directly connected to Cavan Scott’s The Rising Storm and is expected to be published in October. More High Republic and more Daniel José Older are both ok by me!


Jonny O

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