Timothy Zahn Wants To Make More Thrawn Books.

(Not an April Fools’ Day article. Seriously.)

If Timothy Zahn has his way, then be prepared for a lot more of Thrawn than the upcoming standalone novel. At a panel at the Emerald City Comic Con, the author revealed that he is currently working on several pitches to Del Rey for new books starring his iconic Star Wars villain in Disney’s new canon (if we can still call it new after three years).

 

 

On March 3, Timothy Zahn hosted a panel at Seattle, Washington’s Emerald City Comic Con to promote his new Star Wars book, Thrawn. Details on this panel have been surprisingly scarce up until this point, but the podcast Far, Far Away Radio recently did a recap that covered the hour-long discussion (starting at about 14 minutes in), which featured new information about Zahn and Thrawn’s respective stories. Zahn revealed that he was first made aware of Disney’s plans for the character on September 15, 2015 when he was asked if he could show up to talk about Star Wars – which he knew was going to be important when he realized that Dave Filoni was going to be there. When the bomb that Thrawn was going to be in Rebels was dropped, Zahn thought it was a smart decision, but questioned why he needed to be there to hear that. That’s when the people at Lucasfilm told him that they wanted him to write a new novel with the character – and the rest is history.

 

 

Zahn also praised the presence of the Lucasfilm Story Group and their involvement with his novel, since they were able to help him keep the details regarding continuity consistent to a point where he could focus a lot more of his time just writing the story, and in particular, about Thrawn. He also spoke highly about how the LSG has handled Thrawn’s characterization in Rebels – and while a fan asked him about why Thrawn’s “losing” in the show, Zahn noted that he’s playing the long game (which he almost completely won, as shown in “Zero Hour”, since his orders led to Phoenix Squadron dissolving after the destruction of nearly their entire fleet). But the most important part of the discussion is a detail that nobody else picked up on: Zahn’s got a plan for more of the character he brought to life. FFAR recapped this portion of the panel as follows:

 

“Right now, he is pitching Thrawn sequels to Del Rey… He semi-seriously says that he has to do four books with Thrawn, because they’ve already done a Thrawn Trilogy and a Thrawn Duology. One of the sequels he’s pitching involves Thrawn and Anakin Skywalker’s backstory, because someone asked ‘Well, wouldn’t Thrawn have met Darth Vader at some point?’… So that’s kind of the little tidbit he gave us… That is one of the ones he wants to write about.”

 

 

As it stands, Zahn’s Thrawn book will go on sale soon and delve into the character’s backstory, shedding new light on his role in Rebels and more. Hopefully, Zahn will get his wish of making a Thrawn Tetralogy.

 

 

+ posts

Grant has been a fan of Star Wars for as long as he can remember, having seen every movie on the big screen. When he’s not hard at work with his college studies, he keeps himself busy by reporting on all kinds of Star Wars news for SWNN and general movie news on the sister site, Movie News Net. He served as a frequent commentator on SWNN’s The Resistance Broadcast.

Grant Davis (Pomojema)

Grant has been a fan of Star Wars for as long as he can remember, having seen every movie on the big screen. When he’s not hard at work with his college studies, he keeps himself busy by reporting on all kinds of Star Wars news for SWNN and general movie news on the sister site, Movie News Net. He served as a frequent commentator on SWNN’s The Resistance Broadcast.

29 thoughts on “Timothy Zahn Wants To Make More Thrawn Books.

  • April 1, 2017 at 8:47 pm
    Permalink

    Gives me hope Thrawn will be in the Sequel Trilogy at some point hopefully Ep 8 and and 9

    • April 2, 2017 at 12:10 pm
      Permalink

      Kind of hoping he’s not since I have a feeling that they’d pick someone like Channing Tatum or Micheal B. Jordon to play him.

      • April 2, 2017 at 12:22 pm
        Permalink

        That would be a great shame. If his performance on ‘Sherlock’ is anything to go by, Lars Mikkelsen could actually pull off a Thrawn live performance quite well.

        • April 3, 2017 at 8:06 am
          Permalink

          He already has the look and (literally) the voice.

      • April 3, 2017 at 8:05 am
        Permalink

        Why would you think that?

    • April 2, 2017 at 12:14 pm
      Permalink

      A lot of that depends on Season 4 of ‘Rebels’, especially since we know he has to be defeated at some point and is not present anywhere else so far.

      Everything should be just a bit clearer two weeks from now.

    • April 2, 2017 at 12:32 pm
      Permalink

      If not, they might keep him for an animated series between Vi and VII or a stand-alone.

  • April 1, 2017 at 8:58 pm
    Permalink

    is wasn’t so much thrawn losing, but thrawn constantly letting the rebels escape that was frustrating. but this does give me a glimmer of hope that thrawn might in fact have more to his story beyond rebels.

  • April 1, 2017 at 10:39 pm
    Permalink

    Hope they continue to use him in this medium. Hope we never get the watered down kid’s cartoon Thrawn again.

  • April 2, 2017 at 12:59 am
    Permalink

    Yeah, right! Like Timothy Zahn even knows anything about Admiral Thrawn. He’s never even read a book about him let alone written one. This is soooooo an April Fool’s article. And that April Fool’s disclaimer at the top was the big tip off. Regardless, well-played SWNN. Well played, indeed. I look forward to your return to non-April Fool’s joke articles starting tomorrow.

  • April 2, 2017 at 5:29 am
    Permalink

    Necesito.

  • April 2, 2017 at 11:17 am
    Permalink

    More Thrawn is always good. More Thrawn by Zahn is just perfect.

    • April 2, 2017 at 9:20 pm
      Permalink

      I’d rather read another author’s take at the character.

      • April 2, 2017 at 9:42 pm
        Permalink

        It depends on the author. Christie Golden or Alexander Freed could potentially be good picks.

  • April 2, 2017 at 12:09 pm
    Permalink

    Meh. I’ll admit he’s a far superior writer to hacks like Wending, Hambly, and Denning as well as has a true understanding of the SW universe in the way that most EU authors today do not but his writing seems to get weaker with each book and he’ll never ever top the original Thrawn trilogy (which is the pretty much the primary reason why we have the PT/ST today) no matter what his ego tells him.

    • April 2, 2017 at 7:21 pm
      Permalink

      I want Matt Stover to return to Star Wars novels. The ROTS novelization and Traitor remain some of the best written SW books. The novels today are vanilla at best and atrocities at worst.

      • April 3, 2017 at 8:05 am
        Permalink

        Lost Stars tho.

        • April 3, 2017 at 3:33 pm
          Permalink

          So vanilla.

          • April 3, 2017 at 4:32 pm
            Permalink

            Lost Stars is nectar all the way.

    • April 2, 2017 at 9:19 pm
      Permalink

      The original Thrawn trilogy was mediocre at best. Outbound Flight was better.

      • April 3, 2017 at 5:44 pm
        Permalink

        what???

    • April 3, 2017 at 5:59 pm
      Permalink

      Hold on…Denning wrote some good books. And Zahn is having to re-imagine his original character to fit into a completely different universe. A universe that I am guessing, he has little input in and is being told how Thrawn needs to fit in. They should have kept the original Thrawn in canon and worked around it.

    • April 3, 2017 at 6:13 pm
      Permalink

      Hmmm…not sure about that. IMO Zahn is batting about 3/12 with respect to SW books. As much as I love the original Thrawn trilogy, I still have a tough time with them these days as they haven’t really aged too well. That whole “hot chocolate” thing in the first book just makes me cringe to no end.

  • April 2, 2017 at 3:42 pm
    Permalink

    It would be awesome if thrawn got his own stand-alone movie, I rather see that

    one than the Obiwan or Han Solo movie’s, because we know so many things about Obiwan and Han, there were so many comics, they are in countless movies, but about Thrawn we know so little, so he would definetely deserve his own movie

    • April 3, 2017 at 5:43 pm
      Permalink

      Thus far, he is a diminished character from the one Zahn originally wrote. If they could give us the original in a movie….that would have been amazing, now, not so much.

  • April 3, 2017 at 3:31 pm
    Permalink

    I’m even more interested in Thrawn after the interesting detail in Empire’s End. I hope they can use him to give us some more information about that unknown region.

  • April 4, 2017 at 4:46 am
    Permalink

    I’m extremely excited that Zahn is actually pitching new Thrawn books to Del Rey. He’s a Star Wars titan and Thrawn is probably the single biggest Star Wars character that wasn’t introduced in a movie.

    I’d buy every book in a canon Thrawn tetralogy in a heartbeat.

Comments are closed.

LATEST POSTS ON MOVIE NEWS NET