‘Star Wars Visions’ Executive Producer Addresses Decision to Take Volume 2 of the Series Global
Last year, Star Wars Visions decided to take the galaxy far, far away into the realm of anime, but the next volume of shorts will be bringing in talent from around the world. Series executive producer James Waugh reveals why the series is now taking a more varied approach, and delves into how the series will still retain an emphasis on Japanese animation.
At Star Wars Celebration Anaheim 2022, it was officially confirmed that Star Wars Visions would be going forward with a new set of shorts developed by animators from not just Japan, but also the United States, Chile, Ireland, the United Kingdom, Spain, France, South Africa, India, and South Korea. When talking to Deadline about the future of the Visions brand, Waugh explained that he sees it as an all-encompassing label to allow creators from around the world to express what Star Wars means to their style.
“The first anthology is anime because we all loved the style of it, but personally my intention for Visions was to always let it be a more broad palette, because there’s so much great animation work going on in the world. There’s so many interesting voices in all sorts of other mediums that are really focused on animation right now. And we really wanted it to be, in a way, a ‘sub-brand’ that allowed for different creators to come celebrate Star Wars from their own unique cultural perspective… And the guiding light there was that we wanted their storytelling to be a reflection of what Star Wars meant in their culture, but also a reflection of the myths and stories that could only come out of their cultural context.”
This is in-line with the original Visions art book that inspired the anime series, as that featured Star Wars artwork created from the lenses of cultures around the world. That being said, Visions is not shedding its ties to anime world, as anime studios are still involved with the new volumes of content that are coming down the road, and Waugh notes that anime, along with that artbook, are two of the driving factors that led to the creation of the series:
“We’ve always been big fans of anime at Lucasfilm. We were all watching a lot of anime and it became sort of a like lingua franca in a way, like shorthand between people in the animation department with the way we referenced it since we loved the medium. We always talked about how we could do that, and how we could honor the creative development processes, which are very different in Japan. I was looking at ways to find an outlet that could let really amazing creators come in and celebrate Star Wars in their own way. There was a book George [Lucas] did where he hired all these incredible artists to do their own unique paintings using Star Wars as an influence. The breadth of cool, interesting looks of Star Wars that came out of that was just really inspiring. None of this would fit into a typical Star Wars story, but without that framework, you wouldn’t have gotten that great art. So, these ideas sort of dovetailed at that point and the emergence of Disney Plus really allowed us to experiment in a way. I think a lot of the power of Star Wars storytelling is that integrated timeline, but we asked if there was a way to try out different expressions of Star Wars.”
Star Wars Visions Volume 1 is available to watch on Disney Plus, while Volume 2 will begin airing in Spring 2023.
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.
