A little over a year ago, I wrote an article called “What the New Star Wars Trilogy means for the Expanded Universe.” At the time I said that the current Expanded Universe is now part of an alternate timeline, and it turns out that I got that absolutely right.

StarWars.com just reported about what the new Star Wars EU is going to be like, as well as what’s happening to the current EU. Here’s the simple explanation:

All current parts of the Expanded Universe will continue to be published as long as the demand for the content is there, under the title “Legends.” Any content that was made for film or TV is considered to be canon. Creators of future stories in the newly defined canon are allowed to use ideas and content from the Legends Universe, whenever appropriate.

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About a year ago, Disney made the ultimate purchase.  One that made my dreams of seeing more Star Wars films on the big screen possible.  They bought Lucasfilm.  It was this purchase that has actually completed a project that I am now convinced was the plan from the time they bought the Jim Henson Company back in 2004 for an undisclosed amount somewhere around $200 million.  It was actually a much longer journey as Disney had originally purchased distribution rights to all of the Jim Henson Company productions way back in 1991.  It took until September of 2008 before Disney finally rebranded the Muppets Holding Company as Muppet Studios, and placed it under new leadership.

With phase one complete, it was time to begin work on phase two: the acquisition of Marvel Entertainment.  This was a massive purchase costing $4.24 billion.  Disney needed to get control of Marvel Productions, and this was one way that they could do so.  They didn’t want to have any red-tape, even though they very likely had all of the rights they needed thanks to the acquisition of the Muppets.

Lastly, they needed the final piece of the equation.  They needed the footage that was used from both Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises.  And the best way to do that?  Spend $4.06 billion on the purchase of Lucasfilm.  That brought in both franchises.

With the total cost being about $8.5 billion, Disney is very close to being able to achieve their ultimate goal: the release of Jim Henson’s Muppet Babies on DVD and Blu-ray. I had been thinking about the overall purchases that Disney was making, and one day it dawned on me that all of these things were connected.  And with a little bit of research, I found that I wasn’t the only one to think of this.

From what I can gather, the only thing left standing in their way is a simple licensing of some footage from Ghostbusters from Sony Pictures.  Unless they plan on purchasing the rights to the Ghostbusters franchise (which I’d have no problem with, as they seem to just do everything right with the franchises they acquire).  There are also bits from Star Trek: The Next Generation, which belong to Paramount, among a few other things.  It seems to me that we’re as close as ever, and so is Disney.

That’s a pretty large investment so far, though, and I hope that the eventual release of this classic masterpiece of animation works out for them, and they make back the billions they’ve spent in gathering the exclusive rights to the series.

Since the announcement that Disney bought Lucasfilm, there has been a wide range of reactions to it, from the very optimistic and positive, to the stunningly negative and outrageous.  There are many reasons to be optimistic though, and I feel there are no valid arguments against Disney at this point.  Within the few years, Disney has made some pretty smart moves with their acquisitions.  Let’s take a look at that to see why Star Wars is safe in the House of Mouse.

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When you look back on the Star Wars prequels, there is one thing that doesn’t stand out as very obvious at first.  There weren’t many introduced mysteries that we absolutely had to get the answers to.  Instead, most of the mysteries were laid bare for us to see as if we were the ones writing the screenplays.  This wasn’t true all the time, of course, but in those cases, the mysteries weren’t character driven enough, or sweeping enough to cover the trilogy.

Mystery Boxes are those mysteries that occur when you’re watching a movie or TV series brings up a bunch of questions that you feel the need to know the answers to.  They happen very frequently at the beginning of the original Star Wars film, A New Hope.

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One of the big questions about the new Star Wars trilogy is this: what does this mean for all of the books in the Expanded Universe that take place after the original trilogy?

First, some background on the Expanded Universe

Since 1991′s release of Heir to the Empire, new Star Wars stories have been released pretty consistently.  Books that cover, so far, about 44 years of adventures after the Battle of Yavin (which is the battle that takes place in A New Hope).  This territory includes many adventures with the primary cast from the trilogy, as well as their children, the Empire, and changes to the known universe.  A lot of great adventures that land all over the timeline.  If a character dies in a particular book, any book that happens later on cannot have that character suddenly living as if nothing has happened.  What people that don’t know, or understand, that haven’t looked into the Expanded Universe, is that it all happens on the same timeline. This means that a book that happens on the timeline between two previously written books can’t change things so much that the following story doesn’t make sense, so that there’s a logical progression.

Now, with new Star Wars sequels coming to film, how does that effect the Expanded Universe?

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Found this great comic of J.J. Abrams moving over to the Star Wars sandbox, from Star Trek.  He’s carrying his mystery box with him as well!

Source: Bob Thiele