SPECULATION When is the trigger for a fourth trilogy announcement?

Is there a new animated series In the works ?? Or do you mean Rebels ??

 

Rebels is done (or all but) as far as production goes, and there will be another animated series to follow. They haven't given us any details about the story-line, or said where it will air - I'm just guessing that it will be on their streaming service, it might be on Disney XD.

 

I greatly enjoy Rebels, but I think that it would be a genuine waste of the storytelling talent over at LFL’s animation department if they were “limited” to using Disney XD as their solitary platform once again.

I love the show, but you can clearly see that there are some points at which what’s depicted on-screen is potentially reeled back a bit from the initial ideas they planned to portray.

Perhaps Filoni heading up their animation department means that we’ll see a more “child-friendly” (not a fan of that term) show coming to both Disney XD and the streaming service, whilst a more mature show could come to the streaming service exclusively?

 

When I say adult themed, I was thinking more in terms of the Marvel Netflix series. Also, I was referring to live-action, not animated.

But no, the last thing I want for a Star Wars live-action show is something that's being produced with an average or less budget. It's Star Wars, and it deserves to have among the highest production costs for a TV series.

 

With Disney trying to pick up the film and TV side of Fox I would put the chances of a non-special edition OT HD Re-release at 90% or higher. The special editions are so universally panned that I can't imagine if they had the ability to do it that they wouldn't. (Plus you can make some cash on the side since HD re-releases aren't exactly resource intensive.)

All that said, I highly doubt they will remake/redo the prequels. While the special editions have no defenders (as far as I can tell) the prequels have a whole generation of people who at least like them and some within that group that love them. A remake of the prequels would basically be a middle finger to that group of fans.

 

I wasn't clear - I understood you, I was just thinking the animated show, because it would be for kids, might allow them make the live action show more mature.

I'm sure the live action show will have a big TV budget - but the most I've ever heard of a TV show getting is $10 million per episode. Even if they gave Star Wars $15 million per hour long episode, that wouldn't come close to a feature film budget.

--- Double Post Merged, Nov 13, 2017, Original Post Date: Nov 13, 2017 ---

I don't expect a Star Wars cartoon to ever be more "mature" in tone than The Clone Wars". If it's a cartoon, kids and parents will expect it to be family friendly viewing.

Rebels is definitely held back by it's budget - but not as badly as it once was. The first season, that took place mostly on one planet, with very few background character models (among other things) was clearly hamstrung.

 

Yeah, true. The final six episodes of Game of Thrones season 8 is going to have a budget of $15 million per episode. That's being financed by HBO via Warner though, and I'm sure Disney can afford more than that. On the other hand, it's hard to compare the special effects in GoT to Star Wars. Rendering a flying, flame spurting dragon probably costs more than rendering a flying spaceship. But if Disney gave it $20 million per episode I think we'd get something that's worthy of a live-action Star Wars series.

That means 10 episodes would cost $200 million to produce, which sounds fair.

 

My wording wasn’t clear enough, because what you said is actually what I was getting at apologies.

No, I don’t expect anything more mature than TCW, but I think that might be a bit mature for XD’s audience at any rate.

And whilst I agree that Rebels has struggled with being held back to some extent by its budget in the past, I was actually referring to what we see during battles, duels, etc., with regards to characters. As an example, Maul’s death in Rebels (which, to be clear, I thought was handled perfectly) would have played out differently if the show was on another channel and aimed at a slightly more mature audience like TCW.

I’ll use TFA as a reference point in my calculations: the film was 136 minutes long, and had a production budget of $306 million. That’s a production value of $37,500 per second!

Compare this now to your proposed budget of $200 million for a season of 10 episodes, which we’ll gauge as being 60 minutes in length for each episode. That’s 600 minutes/10 hours of content, and would have a production value of ~$5555.56 per second, a mere 15% of the production value of TFA per second.

Whilst I think that some great things could be pulled off with that budget, George Lucas and Rick McCallum were absolutely right in waiting for the cost of CG animation rendering to drop with regards to Star Wars: Underworld, and though it’s dropped in the years since, I think that it’s not down to the price yet that they would have felt comfortable with investing in.

Game of Thrones is a different entity to how any Star Wars live-action TV series could be, simply because Star Wars requires so much more CG by its very nature. Yes, real-world locations are being used, but touching that up with CG story the point of that authentic Star Wars feel is crucial, and I’m sure that Disney would happily invest more in this project than has been invested in the most expensive episodes of GOT.

Another problem arises from this, though, and that’s the size of ILM: they, like every other company, have a limited staff, and the short production times for TFA and RO have shown some evidence of their CG department being spread perhaps a little too thinly, such as with Maz and Snoke in the former and shuttles and Tarkin in the latter.

Just got to wait and see, but I feel like LFL would be better off pulling some people in-house, either from ILM or elsewhere, if they’re serious about making this series as authentic to the GFFA as it could and should be.

 

One problem with Rebels is that it's a show aimed for kids, but adult fans and media sites such as IGN treat it like its a serious TV series. At least TCW was meant to be watched by tweens.

There's absolutely zero danger in every episode, and each episode is extremely predictable and follows the same pattern. The show makes the Empire look like a worthless comedic organization whose troopers and generals can't fulfill any mission - ever. The only interesting episodes involve character tropes and stories from TCW - Ahsoka, Darth Maul, etc. But sadly, the main character Ezra is the worst character in SW history, along with Sabine who is just as boring. The only new characters with depth are Kanan and Hera, maybe because they act like real people? The show would be so much better if the Ghost crew consisted of only Kanan, Hera, Zeb and Chopper. Plus Zeb should've died early on to create some stakes and make the Empire look like a real threat.

In TCW many Jedi were killed to the left and right. That's what I call danger.