There’s been a lot of good Star Wars content on TV recently, much of it due to the success of Star Wars Rebels on Disney XD. This week, the network announced it has picked up a brand new animated Star Wars franchise program, and this one has an incredibly cool premise and format. Lego Star Wars: Droid Tales will retell the first six movies in the franchise in shorter installations and—as the title implies—using Legos.
It seems that the big gimmick would be the retelling via animation and Legos. However, since even casual Star Wars fans already know the plot of the first 6 movies, Disney XD is going for much bigger than Legos with the new concept. In fact, the network actually plans to retell the six Star Wars movies from the perspective of R2-D2 and C-3PO. That’s a retelling a lot of people will hopefully get behind.
According to THR, the setup for the new series will be quite intense. The series will initially pick up at the end of The Return of the Jedi. We’ll get a quick update on the droids, and then the outlet says there will be a kidnapping leading to “a new adventure” but also hearing the whole Star Wars story in chronological order. At the very least, it will certainly provide an easy outlet for explaining the way the Star Wars chronology works to Star Wars novices, eg. our young children.
While a ton of shows need to get script and pilot orders before they move forward, Disney XD seems to believe the channel already has a winner on its hands. Lego Star Wars: Droid Tales has already been picked up to series, and five episodes will be produced for the network. Each episode will run for 22 minutes.
Currently Lego and Disney XD haven’t announced a specific premiere date for the new endeavor, but we can tell you the series is expected to air in 2015, and should hit the schedule before the latest flick Star Wars Episode 7: The Force Awakens premieres in theaters on December 18, 2015. (If interested in the flick, here’s all we know so far about it.)
Obviously, the new movie is the bigger draw for 2015, but we already know that Lego animation can be pretty vivid, and getting the chance to see the entire Star Wars movie franchise revisited in a brand new manner is pretty flippin’ cool. Disney, which now owns the rights to LucasFilms, has done some pretty great stuff with Star Wars Rebels, integrating new and interesting storylines with some familiar characters, and if Lego Star Wars: Droid Tales does anything even remotely similar, it should be worth a watch.
