‘Star Wars’ Rumor: Big Budget Ahsoka Miniseries Reportedly Planned

Fan-favorite Star Wars character Ahsoka will be back in Star Wars: Rebels next season after years of absence, but the animated series won’t see the last of the character, if the latest reports are to be believed.

There has been a lot of interest in new adventures involving Ahsoka in the past few months and it turns out that there are plans to explore more of the beloved character’s story in a miniseries.

According to a Reddit user, the idea about a Star Wars miniseries featuring Ahsoka was pitched by Star Wars: Rebels executive producer Dave Filoni to Disney and ABC. While there is interest, the project is on hold at the moment. The leakster explains as follows.

“So about [six] months ago, Dave Filoni pitched a pretty ambitious animated project to Disney/ABC. He wrote a pilot script and everything. This isn’t like your everyday kids cartoon.”

Filoni reportedly wants eight episodes with a forty-minute runtime each. He also allegedly wants a budget that is even greater than the amount used on Star Wars: The Clone Wars.

These factors present challenges on Disney’s side in making this Star Wars miniseries with Ahsoka happen. The length of the episode is deemed too long and one that “doesn’t have much of a precedent.” Justifying the big budget needed for the project is also a herculean hurdle.

However, Filoni reportedly believes that since it is a Star Wars miniseries with limited episodes and not a full-on series like Star Wars: Rebels, expenses won’t pose issues despite possible viewership decline. Add to that the fact that the show will be on air for a few months only.

According to the Star Wars insider, Disney is actually “curious” about the Ahsoka miniseries, but they want to make sure that it won’t be a flop especially with the budget it requires.

They first want to see how their upcoming film Descendants 2 out this summer and the highly-anticipated Inhumans series premiering this fall will fare before giving the green light to the Star Wars project.

Either way, it appears that Disney already has a couple of plans to get the Ahsoka miniseries off the ground should the abovementioned projects perform the way they expect them to. They would prop up the Star Wars miniseries as a “huge event” to solve the issue with the budget.

Disney plans to do so by reportedly releasing the first two episodes of the Star Wars miniseries in theaters, like what they are doing with Inhumans, as a way to promote the Ahsoka project and invite fans to watch the rest on television.

They are also considering to air the potential Star Wars project on multiple networks at the same time to make sure it will reach more people that could tune in, making for increased viewership.

As to why Ahsoka will be the center of the Star Wars miniseries, the Redditor says that it is the character who helped bring in huge ratings for Star Wars: Rebels. It does not come as a shock anyway, seeing the love fans have for Ahsoka.

The miniseries will be set after the events of the Star Wars: The Clone Wars. The leakster explains as follows.

“It would not finish exact Clone Wars episodes, but would take the ‘important’ story arcs and rewrite them to meld together better into a cohesive standalone story.”

With regards to the possible premiere date, Filoni only has the pilot script for the purported Star Wars project at the moment. Looking at the production schedule of Star Wars: Rebels, which takes more than a year per season, the earliest it could reach the big or small screen is 2019.

Whatever the fate of the Star Wars Ahsoka miniseries will be, Filoni and his team should learn it by fall. More concrete information about it should be made available by then.

The Reddit user says that it is because of the Ahsoka miniseries that the Star Wars: Rebels panel at the Star Wars Celebration last month was “light on content,” which suggests that it is still very much on the table.

“More information about the planned series finale and other stuff that they’d include in this show was held back because they plan on using it now. In previous celebrations, they didn’t know either way, so they went ahead and showed the content.”

Ahsoka has been in the rumor mill in the recent months quite a lot, with the character also being attached to a rumored live-action project. Many Star Wars fans definitely love and are intrigued by the character. In the Star Wars mythology, she is one of the few known to serve neither the light side nor the dark side and uses white lightsabers.

With no way to confirm the credibility of the source, however, fans are advised to take this with a grain of salt. Whether or not a Star Wars Ahsoka miniseries is happening, they will just have to keep their eyes peeled.

[Featured Image by Disney and Lucasfilm Animation]