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Any and all events ever depicted in every Star Wars game ever made is no longer to be considered canon.
That’s the new directive coming from IP owner Disney, which has said that the films and TV series are now the only official entries in Star Wars fiction.
This means the events seen in the likes of Knights of the Old Republic, The Force Unleashed, Empire at War, Republic Commando and many more no longer depict events in the Star Wars universe that will dictate future events or be referenced in the series’ history.
When he created Star Wars, George Lucas built a universe that sparked the imagination, and inspired others to create. He opened up that universe to be a creative space for other people to tell their own tales. This became the Expanded Universe, or EU, of comics, novels, videogames, and more,” a statement said.
While Lucasfilm always strived to keep the stories created for the EU consistent with our film and television content as well as internally consistent, Lucas always made it clear that he was not beholden to the EU. He set the films he created as the canon.
Now, with an exciting future filled with new cinematic instalments of Star Wars, all aspects of Star Wars storytelling moving forward will be connected. Under Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy’s direction, the company for the first time ever has formed a story group to oversee and coordinate all Star Wars creative development.
In order to give maximum creative freedom to the filmmakers and also preserve an element of surprise and discovery for the audience, Star Wars Episodes VII-IX will not tell the same story told in the post-Return of the Jedi Expanded Universe. Demand for past tales of the Expanded Universe will keep them in print, presented under the new Legends banner.
On the screen, the first new canon to appear will be Star Wars Rebels. In print, the first new books to come from this creative collaboration include novels from Del Rey Books.”
Star Wars VII, which is being directed by JJ Abrams, is due out in 2015.
