The holidays are a great time for gathering around with your family and watching cinema classics. In my family, it’s always old Bond films, but in Germany this year, there will be a different reason to celebrate. Sky Deutschland has secured the rights to all six Star Wars films and plan to present them on their own channel, along with other Star Wars footage during the holidays. Here are the details.
Disney and Lucasfilm worked out the deal with Sky Deutschland, and it’s a pretty sweet deal, allowing Star Wars fans to tune in 24 hours a day. The 24/7 Star Wars channel will feature all of the major Star Wars movies, which will be shown in the correct timeline, starting with Star Wars: Episode I: The Phantom Menace and ending with Star Wars: Episode VI – The Return of the Jedi. In addition, the channel has secured the rights to a slew of featurettes and documentaries. Twenty featurettes will air as part of the pop up channel, along with two documentaries.
For two weeks, Sky Hits Digital will become Sky Star Wars HD. The 24/7 channel will hit the schedule between December 1 and December 14, so it will predate the holidays by a little bit. However, that time of year is often good for hunkering down in the cold and watching a little TV, and for Star Wars fans, it may very well be the best gift they get all year.
According to THR, the channel will be available outside Germany, albeit only in Austria. So, if you are a Star Wars fan living in the US or the UK, you are currently out of luck. Seriously, though, I’m not sure how Disney and LucasFilm hasn’t worked out a 24/7 deal on one of the networks in the States. While there have been Star Wars marathons on TV in the past, people are currently pretty amped up about the new Star Wars movie set to hit theaters in late 2015. The holidays are the perfect time to cross-promote, but apparently Sky Deutschland is the only group that feels a Star Wars channel is a good fit (or at least had the wherewithal to pull it off).
On the bright side, ABC does have a special airing of Star Wars Rebels headed to primetime at the end of the month. On October 26, Star Wars Rebels: Spark of Rebellion will air on ABC with an extra scene featuring voicework from James Earl Jones, who notoriously has played Darth Vader in the Star Wars movies. It’s not a 24/7 marathon of all things Star Wars, but at least it’s something.
