All Star Wars films will be on Disney+, even A New Hope

0

During Disney’s “Investor Day,” a sinister phrase that I suspect will be a national holiday in the near future, the company confirmed that all Star Wars films”will roll out within the first year” of the Disney+ streaming service. It will be one of the main pillars of the service, along with Marvel, Pixar, Disney proper, and, uh, National Geographic. This will include Jon Favreau’s original show The Mandalorian and the Rogue One Cassian Andor spin-off, and even the previously locked-away-by-copyright original A New Hope film.

Also announced were news bits about The Mandalorian premiering at the service’s launch, which is confirmed to be on November 12. The series stars Pedro Pascal and a much larger cast, including Werner Herzog(?). While the Cassian Andor prequel was confirmed to have Diego Luna in his (perceived) iconic role, the Investor Day presentation also revealed that Alan Tudyk, who is appearing in so many Disney properties lately that I think the company keeps him in a cage, will return in his Rogue One role as sardonic droid K-2SO. Additionally, Stephen Schiff (The Americans) will serve as showrunner for the program, which will premiere in 2021.

I have to wonder what “all Star Wars films” really means—are we including The Star Wars Holiday Special in the mix? What about Caravan of Courage: An Ewok Adventure, a totally real thing that you should look up? And then we have a litany of (now non-canonical) animated shows, such as Star Wars: Droids and the original microseries Star Wars: Clone Wars from the folks who made Samurai Jack.

One thing’s for certain: it will be nice to have the original Star Wars film back with the others. Fox previously had a stronghold on the distribution rights of A New Hope, having them indefinitely and preventing any boxset releases from Disney. Naturally, Disney pulled the biggest flex possible and straight up bought 21st Century Fox. The only question left is just which versions of the original trilogy will we see? Can Disney magic dig up the original, original cuts of these classic films? Probably not, but we can all dream.

Alan Tudyk to Return as K-2SO in Cassian Andor Live-Action Series [StarWars.com]