Star Wars: The Sequel Trilogy

I was going to write about something else, but this was brought to my attention just this morning.  First, as of October 30, it was announced Disney is acquiring Lucasfilm—not a surprise.  Those two companies have worked together for years and Disney is like the Blob: it absorbs all it touches.  The second bit of news: they want to make Episodes VII, VIII, and IX.

Holy crap.

These are some of my initial thoughts: Lucas is retiring.  It’s said that he’ll stay on as a creative consultant, but as far as any active work is concerned with the business, he’s done.  And with him not getting involved with the writing, the movies already have a decent start.

And, I won’t kid anyone—I will watch these movies in theaters.  Even as horrible as I knew the prequel trilogy movies were going to be, I still had to see them on the big screen.  Star Wars is an event as much as it is a movie anymore and it’s a ride I have to be on.  (But so we’re clear, I’m only doing this for the movies; I refuse to watch that Clone Wars TV series.)

The big questions I have is what story they’ll decide to tell and how this is going to affect the Star Wars literature medium.

This is not a small question.  I don’t know how large the audience is, but since Timothy Zahn wrote his own Star Wars trilogy, there is a book or set of books for every year after Return of the Jedi for nearly forty years of the Star Wars universe history.  And there are fans who are as attached to the literary creations, like Mara Jade, Thrawn, Han and Leia’s kids, and so on.  I barely read the books and even I know that some of these are as beloved as any of the original film creations.

So I’m wondering if they’re going to try and incorporate what’s in the books, ignore the books and do their own thing, or find an epic adventure that’s barely tied to the Skywalkers but explore something deeper about the Jedi.

One thing is for sure, fascinating things are going to happen within that canon.