Lego Star Wars to be celebrated in TV special
'New and fun direction' for sci-fi series
George Lucas has picked up the building blocks again by readying a Lego Star Wars TV special, to broadcast sometime this autumn.
The news was revealed when Comingsoon snapped a banner promoting the show at the Licensing International Expo 2011.
The television special will apparently be created to compliment the ongoing series The Clone Wars, taking Star Wars in a "new and fun direction." Star Wars and Lego, so very new indeed.
Next year, the original film celebrates its 35th anniversary and by then the world will be even more awash with Star Wars trappings.
Die-hards and willing parents will no doubt line up outside cinemas for the remastered 3D version of The Phantom Menace, while many will stay indoors to watch both trilogies on Blu-ray when they hit shelves this autumn.
By that time, the Tatooine Homestead should have been repaired, sparking an influx of fanboy pilgrimages perhaps.
On the gaming front, there's Kinect Star Wars to look forward to, as well as the anticipated MMORPG The Old Republic. The latter teased us all a few weeks ago with a stunning CG intro video.
On Friday, Sony Online announced the original Star Wars MMO, Star Wars Galaxies is to be killed off permanently this December.
According to an interview with Joystiq's MMO blog Massively, president John Smedley said the LucasArts contract was almost up and with The Old Republic set for imminent release, the company felt "it's the right time for the game to end." ®
COMMENTS
Star Wars and Lego, so very new indeed.
You may laugh, but only yesterday my son suggested that Lucas should remake the original six films, but in Lego to match the games.
From his ten-year-old perspective, he has a point. The original films are ancient history and most of his generation have probably only watched them as a sort of cultural backdrop to the games and toys they are familiar with. Perhaps George has realised this and is even now working to "fix" his youthful error of using human actors when it would so obviously have made more sense to use the merchandising characters throughout.
Yeah, I know. I now *owe* EVERYONE a new keyboard.
Preview
And now, for your feature presentation: The classic RE-RE-RE-RELEASE of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. In this version the entire cast has been digitally replaced by 3D Ewoks.
Fanboi icon coz it looks like C3PO to me.
3D?
Until we can walk around a little Princess Leia appearing on our desks saying "Help me Obi Wan", then we WON'T HAVE 3D!!
Current "3D" is just 2D with a slimmer wallet, squinty eyes and a head-ache.
Have you seen the games?
The games are good, and the graphics in them are good. The story clips in II and III are excelent, indeed some of the story clips in II were priceless. Getting the story across with lego figures that can't speak made for some great creative leaps. Such as Darth Vader showing a family photograph to Luke to prove his point.
The games are much, much better than some of the spinoffs - such as the clone wars TV series so I have no problem with this. I certainly have less of a problem with it than I do Lucas' continual hashed up re-releases of the original material seemingly just to make more and more money when he already has more money than he could possibly need. This is certainly more original than just redoing the movies in 3D.
Why lego?
Is it so they can use crap chunky graphics?
Talk about a TV program set up just to sell toys.
