With all of the dramatic shifts that have taken place in the Star Wars universe over the past few years, it's hard to keep track of what is still officially canon. However, with a new Star Wars film coming soon, Disney plans on releasing 20 new novels to fill in the gaps between the Original Trilogy and the upcoming one.
What have Princess Leia and Han Solo been up to in that time? What happened to Luke Skywalker after he defeated his father, Darth Vader? And what events can we expect in the new film, Star Wars: The Force Awakens?
These new novels hope to cover the stories of some of our most beloved Star Wars characters, essentially replacing other books and video games previously released that were eventually deemed as not canon by Disney.
Of course, this means that those non-canon books that had Han and Leia married with twins could be wrong and that Vader never had an apprentice named Starkiller. Instead, we're getting all new stories written by authors who've worked closely with those writing the scripts of the new J.J. Abrams-helmed films.
The new collective series of books, Journey to Star Wars: The Force Awakens, will have multiple authors, multiple editors and a variety of publishers.
"The Force Awakens is an extraordinarily, heavily guarded storyline," says Andrew Sugarman, executive vice president of Disney Publishing Worldwide. "To track it, a lot of top-secret meetings were happening up in San Francisco as we worked through this program."
One thing you can expect from the new book series are hints of what's to come in the new films, although many of these plots have remained secret. Basically, the idea is to get readers interested in the new films by catching them up on events that happen before events in the first movie.
"The partnership with the story group and the editorial team always had to be true to the sanctity of the film while making sure that we find these moments to introduce hints, clues, and puzzle pieces," says Sugarman. '"Without revealing what those pieces are, it will just allow readers to speculate about the new film: What could a location mean, or what could a character mean?"
Disney also plans to publish a series of Young Adult novels based on three Star Wars films, A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. However, supporting characters from the films will act as the storytellers in those books.
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[Photo Credit: Lucasfilm]
