We will officially never get to see Mara Jade or Luke Skywalker survive a near-fatal meeting with the Dark Side on the big screen. Lucasfilm has confirmed that the story team working on the new Star Wars films under Disney will not be telling the Expanded Universe stories from the novels and comics.
In a statement on the Star Wars website, Lucasfilm and Disney said that the Expanded Universe will be moving in a new direction without beloved stories like Timothy Zahn’s Thrawn Trilogy or Dark Horse’s Dark Empire series. From now on, the official canon includes all six movies, Star Wars: The Clone Wars and the upcoming series Star Wars: Rebels.
However, not all elements of the Expanded Universe will be forgotten. Some elements did make it into Rebels and those will be joining the canon. Rebels will be the first part of this “new” Star Wars universe and that includes all books related to it.
Of course, Del Rey Books will be keeping some of the EU favorites in print, but placed under the new “Legends” banner to avoid confusion.
“We have an unprecedented slate of new Star Wars entertainment on the horizon,” Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy said in a statement. “We're set to bring Star Wars back to the big screen, and continue the adventure through games, books, comics, and new formats that are just emerging. This future of interconnected storytelling will allow fans to explore this galaxy in deeper ways than ever before.”
It was always a pipe dream to think that Lucasfilm and Disney would turn its new movies into live-action versions of the novels. Recently, writer Simon Kinberg, who is working on one of the spin-off films, said that the writing team isn’t bound by anything already written outside of the films.
Star Wars: Episode VII, which will be directed by J.J. Abrams and stars R2-D2, opens on Dec. 18, 2015.