Star Wars Is Getting This Web Series Before The Force Awakens
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If you’re reading this, I’ll just go ahead and assume you’re one of the millions of people around the world whose anticipation for Star Wars: The Force Awakens knows no bounds. Disney is looking to capitalize on rampant fandom with a new series of web shorts that they’ll put out over the next year to make damned sure every organism on the planet is aware of this massive tentpole.
Sadly, this won’t be a spinoff series or anything along the lines of Star Wars Rebels. These shorts will instead focus on the Star Wars universe as a whole, in a background information kind of way. While there are not a lot of details are out there, Bloomberg reports at least two areas of subject matter that will be tackled are fashion and games. You want to know how to make a robe that looks like one a Jedi would wear? How about learning to cut wood with lightsabers? Maybe this series will show you, but probably not.
For this project, Disney is working with digi-company Maker Studios, whom the House of Mouse bought in May for a whopping $500 million. The whole point of it all seems to be for promotional purposes (obviously) and to boost awareness for the property. I think they’d have an easier time trying to promote “air for breathing” and “water for drinking,” but you can never have too much marketing.
It’s already been noted by Fandango that Star Wars: The Force Awakens is the most anticipated movie of 2015, if not the rest of eternity. Plus, the trailer released at the end of November is already the most watched trailer OF ALL TIME, with something around 60 million views so far. I think the only people that don’t know about this movie are either dead or infants.
Maker already has sponsors lined up to fund the web series, although none of them were named due to a lack of authorization from the Powers That Be. (We assume it’s a room full of J.J. Abrams clones.) Somewhat interestingly, the promotions will be put on by online personalities, like outlandishly popular YouTube celebs. The idea behind this is grabbing the younger generation that wasn’t around when the first trilogy was released, and possibly not even for the second one. To be so lucky. That kind of thing won’t work for me, as I tend to only use YouTube for music videos and movie trailers, but the rampant popularity of online personalities is here to stay I guess.
It appears that Maker will also begin producing promotional material for Disney’s other projects, including stuff from Pixar and Marvel. Like that little arthouse movie you probably also haven’t heard about, Avengers: Age of Ultron.
We’re not quite sure when Maker will begin to reveal this new content, but you can likely expect it in the months to come. And of course, Star Wars: The Force Awakens hits theaters on December 18, 2015.
