While there hasn’t been an official announcement confirming that the first live-action bit of Disney’s Star Wars universe would be Episode VII, there really wasn’t any reason to think otherwise.
Today, however, that has changed a bit, as Disney handed out a brochure at the European Brand Licensing Show detailing their plans for the next couple years. Included in those plans are Darth Vader TV specials sometime in spring or summer 2014.
Before we get into what this could mean, check out an image of the brochure below.
Unfortunately, we don’t have any more information than what you can see above, but let’s take a shot at decoding it anyway. First of all, note the “s” at the end of special. That’s right, not just one, but multiple specials coming for the villain to end all villains. Now it doesn’t explicitly say that the specials will be live-action, but I’ll go ahead and assume for now that if it was something animated, it would have been mentioned already.
Now for what has me worried – I just can’t imagine an awesome Darth Vader story going straight to TV, and I certainly can’t imagine it being referred to as Darth Vader “themed.” That sounds more like my 9-year-old birthday party than something that would air on ABC. If it is live-action, then is James Earl Jones going to voice him? Also, there is still a chance that it could be animated, which means it’d likely go straight to one of the Disney channels and we’re all getting excited over nothing.
Perhaps I’m being overly-hopefully in thinking this, but what if the way that is written isn’t totally accurate, and instead they have a mini-series planned. I feel like if that was the case, this probably wouldn’t be the first we’re hearing of it, but you never know what Disney is going to do on this one, so it is technically a possibility. A mini-series would have me feeling a lot more confident than TV specials do, but until we know that’s actually what it is, I’m staying cautious on this one.
I’d like to think this is going to be a success since it’s Star Wars and more specifically, Darth Vader, but I know that I’m probably getting my hopes up for nothing.
What do you think Disney has in store for us? Let us know in the comments section below.