Star Wars 'Forces Of Destiny' Shorts Put Women In The Spotlight

There's going to be a fair bit of news about Star Wars coming out over the next few days, as Star Wars Celebration takes place in Orlando, Florida. As it happens, one of the first stories to break also happens to be animation related.

Disney and LucasFilm have announced that Forces Of Destiny latest animated addition to the Star Wars cannon. The series will take the form of a series of shorts (2-3 minutes each) centring on new adventures for some of the female heroes of the sci-fi saga.  So far the confirmed line-up includes Rey,  Jyn Erso, Ashoka, Sabine Wren and of course Princess Leia. 


The shorts will be released via YouTube starting this July.  A two-part TV special will follow on Disney Channel later in 2017 that will feature an additional eight shorts.

Daisy Ridley, Felicity Jones, Tiyar Sicar, Ashley Eckstein and Lupita Nyong'o will all be reprising their roles from the films or past shows. The animated shorts will be produced by LucasFilm Animation- and the stills released reveal this will be a return to 2D for the franchise.

Star Wars has a long association with animation, most recently with the successful Star Wars Rebels. This new project, however, is most reminiscent of the 2D Cartoon Network Clone Wars shorts that were directed by Genndy Tartakovsky between 2003 and 2005. These were arguably one of the only good things to come out of the prequels, so this new series certainly has our attention.

The series will be accompanied by a range of merchandise and a series of books.


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