STAR WARS: THE CLONE WARS took home the Emmy for Outstanding Special Class – Animation at the 40th Anniversary Daytime Emmy Awards on Sunday, June 16, 2013. This is in addition to David Tennant’s win for Outstanding Performer in an Animated Program for his guest appearance as the Jedi droid Huyang in the series’ fifth season. Congratulations to all of the CLONE WARS cast and crew!

PHOTO SOURCE: Emmy Graphic

According to Dave Filoni’s Facebook page, David Tennant (Doctor Who, Fright Night) has won the Emmy for Outstanding Performance in an Animated Program for his work as Huyang on STAR WARS: THE CLONE WARS! Congratulations, Mr. Tennant, on your win!

PHOTO SOURCE: Dave Filoni’s Facebook Page

Theme Park Insider is reporting that Walt Disney World in Florida is going to get an expansion to their Disney Hollywood Studios: Star Wars Land.

This appears to be a five-year project, putting completion in 2018, though Disney could choose to throw money at it and accelerate it by a year.

There’s more info in the article, including where such an expansion might happen. A STAR WARS-themed area at the Disney parks has been speculated on since the Disney acquisition of Lucasfilm last fall, but it looks like it’s finally gained some traction.

PHOTO SOURCE: Star Wars Weekends 2011 – Last Day

Yahoo! OMG! has a series of quotes from George Lucas discussing J.J. Abrams and STAR WARS: EPISODE VII.

“I think he understands the whole thing and how it works…. And if he doesn’t, [Lucasfilms president] Kathy [Kennedy] will keep it straight,” he added with a laugh.

Check out the article for more.

According to the Official Site, prequel concept artists Doug Chiang and Iian McCaig have returned to Lucasfilm for work on future STAR WARS films.

Artists Doug Chiang and Iain McCaig, both instrumental in shaping the look of the STAR WARS saga, reunited at the start of this year as part of the team Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy has assembled to create an exciting new future for STAR WARS… Chiang and McCaig join the previously announced team of top filmmaking talent, including J.J. Abrams, Michael Arndt, Lawrence Kasdan and Simon Kinberg, who are shaping the future of STAR WARS.

Team? That sounds a lot like what Drew McWeeney was saying in his piece. I wonder who else is on board who hasn’t been “previously announced?”

“It’s wonderful to be back! It’s been over ten years since I last worked on STAR WARS but my STAR WARS roots have touched nearly every film I’ve designed since. It’s still a bit surreal that I get to work on another one.” says Chiang.

Asked about his work on upcoming STAR WARS movies, McCaig smiles. “I never thought I’d live to see this day. It’s pure magic to have the band back together again.”

SOURCE: StarWars.com

There have been some rumors going around the internet today regarding story elements and casting for EPISODE VII. I read them this morning and didn’t post them as right off the bat, they struck me as wishful thinking by an overzealous fan. Now, Drew McWeeney over at Hitfix has a piece debunking the rumors.

This is my way of saying that I am 100% sure that the rumor that’s online today about the casting breakdown for STAR WARS: EPISODE VII is false. It’s not slightly off-base. It’s not tentative. It’s fiction. That is not a breakdown for the Abrams film at all. That has nothing to do with the film that Michael Arndt is currently writing.

I’ve been reading Drew’s work for close to fifteen years now (really?! Has it been that long?), and he tends to have a good track record, especially with STAR WARS and Abrams related material, as he points out in the article. If he’s claiming to know something and says the rumor is fake, I’d say he’s likely right.

As it is, he does drop a couple more interesting tidbits throughout the piece.

More importantly, though, the process that is underway with Michael Arndt writing the film involves a number of other voices all thinking about how to further expand the universe of the movies. Simon Kinberg, Lawrence Kasdan, and voices you aren’t even aware of yet are all contributing to the conversation…

Other voices that we “aren’t even aware of yet”? That seems interesting. It almost sounds like Lucasfilm has set up a STAR WARS think tank to map everything out. I wonder who else is a member? Dave Filoni or Greg Weisman from the upcoming Rebels animated series? Who else is in on the new STAR WARS universe? It’s all very interesting, but to me, the most exciting bit is:

Work on the major set pieces has already begun at ILM, and this is going to end up being the most elaborate physical build they’ve done for the effects team since Return Of The Jedi, something I look forward to discussing with John Knoll when I see him at the Pacific Rim press day.

It seems that pre-visualization for the major action scenes is being done, and in the comments of the article, Drew mentions that he’s referring to ILM building more physical models as opposed to digital when it comes to some of the effects, which sounds like great news!

SOURCE: Hitfix

I’m currently watching the livestream of EA’s presentation at E3 where they just showed a teaser video for a new game simply titled STAR WARS: BATTLEFRONT. The video showed a snowy landscape, followed by a snowspeeder crashing and the foot of an AT-AT stomping down. Stay tuned as I’m sure more info will be released in the coming hours…

UPDATE: Here’s the teaser, courtesy of IGN.