With Disney currently developing the animated STAR WARS REBELS, executive producer Simon Kinberg has been speaking to Entertainment Weekly about what we can expect to see from the show.

Talking about giving fans the start of the Rebel Alliance, Kinberg said, “I always loved origin stories and the origin of an entire organisation, I don’t think we’ve seen that before, and we’ve approached it in a real-world way. If I told the story of the American Revolution, I wouldn’t want to start with the most famous battle, I’d want to start when it was just four guys in a room, the earliest spark of that seems dramatic and cool. That’s a big part of the fun of it, the little back-room dealings, the first time you see it’s possible to stand up to the Empire.”

Despite the rebellion obviously set to play an important role in the show, Kinberg also confirmed that audiences will get to see a truly dominant Galactic Empire, saying, “The world we’re creating is an Imperial world. You’re seeing the impact of the Empire, of Stormtroopers around the galaxy, abusing and oppressing people. Thematically and politically, it goes to some dark places. But for the tone of the show we took our cues from the original movies, which had fun and adventure and swashbuckling with emotion and grounded human characters. We took all our cues from the original films. Obviously there are slight tonal differences between NEW HOPE, EMPIRE and JEDI. But I think the closest intended voice of the show is A NEW HOPE. So there are places where we get into darker backstories, there are places we see how cruel and malevolent the Empire can be, but for the most part it’s a fun and character-driven story.”

Kinberg added that fans can see an animated series that will be different in look to THE CLONE WARS, and will also draw more from Ralph McQuarrie’s original concept art for George Lucas’ 1977 STAR WARS: A NEW HOPE. He revealed, “The intention of what I’ve seen so far, and we’re pretty far down the line, the intention is for it to feel quite different from CLONE WARS. The place we went back to as to a visual template was Ralph McQuarrie, who was one of the original concept artists for the original STAR WARS films. His art is softer, a little more figurative, more of a feel of being drawn, less computer generated. The first few movies had a bit of a hand-made quality. We wanted the show to have that. There’s also in the archives, where Lucas keeps all the original props, there’s tons of art that’s McQuarrie’s musing on the STAR WARS universe that was never used in the films. There’s places where we’ve quite literally taken world-creation or vehicles or creatures from the original art that was never used in the films and make that part of the show.”

All sounds good to us, how about you?

Set to fill the gaps between REVENGE OF THE SITH and A NEW HOPE, STAR WARS REBELS will debut on Disney XD this September.

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