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Star Wars: The High Republic | Announcement Trailer

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Lucasfilm just opened a door to a Star Wars era nobody has seen on the page before.

On February 24, 2020, Lucasfilm dropped the announcement trailer for “Star Wars: The High Republic,” officially unmasking the publishing initiative that had been circulating under the codename “Project Luminous.” The story jumps roughly 200 years before “The Phantom Menace,” landing in a period when the Galactic Republic and the Jedi Order are riding the high point of peace and expansion rather than sliding toward collapse. It’s a rare move for the franchise: a flagship storytelling push built with no film or TV production to answer to.

• Five core authors — Claudia Gray, Justina Ireland, Daniel José Older, Cavan Scott, and Charles Soule — are steering the project alongside the Lucasfilm Story Group.
• The era introduces original heroes, including a Wookiee Jedi, and a new villain faction called the Nihil, built around the question of “what scares the Jedi.”
• The launch wave lands in August 2020 at Star Wars Celebration Anaheim, headlined by Soule’s adult novel “Light of the Jedi,” Ireland’s middle-grade “A Test of Courage,” and Gray’s YA novel “Into the Dark,” plus comics from Scott and Older.

A Golden Age, Not a Prequel Rerun

Every other era Star Wars has mined for stories — the Clone Wars, the Empire, the sequel trilogy’s aftermath — is defined by conflict closing in on the Jedi. The High Republic flips that. This is the Order at its peak, protecting a Republic that’s still expanding into uncharted space, with none of the institutional rot that eventually curdles into Order 66. That framing gives the five authors room to build threats from scratch instead of servicing continuity that fans already know the ending to.

The trailer leans into that freedom, teasing a frontier still being mapped and a Jedi Order that hasn’t yet learned to be afraid. Readers who gravitated toward the prequel era for its worldbuilding rather than its politics now get an entire span of galactic history built for exactly that appetite. For fans tracking every corner of the franchise’s expansion, from streaming to the Star Wars Hotel construction at Walt Disney World, this is Lucasfilm opening a new front rather than revisiting an old one.

Five Authors, One Timeline

Claudia Gray, Justina Ireland, Daniel José Older, Cavan Scott, and Charles Soule aren’t writing in isolation — the announcement makes clear this is a coordinated timeline built in lockstep with the Lucasfilm Story Group, the same body that keeps the wider canon consistent across movies, shows, and books. Soule’s “Light of the Jedi” is positioned as the adult-novel tentpole, Ireland’s “A Test of Courage” carries the middle-grade entry point, and Gray’s “Into the Dark” fills the YA lane, with Scott and Older handling comic series that run parallel to the prose.

The Nihil aren’t Sith retreads — they’re built to answer one question: what actually scares the Jedi.

That’s the pitch buried in the trailer’s marketing language, and it’s a deliberate swerve from expectations. Longtime readers who assumed a new dark-side faction would fill the antagonist role instead get something purpose-built for this specific, still-idealistic version of the Jedi Order.

The Publishing Map

The High Republic isn’t a single book line — it’s spread across Disney Lucasfilm Press, Del Rey, Marvel, and IDW Publishing, hitting adult fiction, YA, middle-grade, and comics simultaneously. That’s a distribution strategy built to catch every age bracket of the fanbase at once rather than staggering releases and hoping momentum carries between formats.

Star Wars Celebration Anaheim in August 2020 is the target date for the first wave, giving Lucasfilm a live event to build the launch around rather than a quiet street date. For a franchise that has leaned hard on trailers and panels to control its own narrative, pairing a new era’s debut with its biggest fan convention isn’t an accident — it’s the same playbook the studio uses everywhere else in its calendar, including the rest of its 2020 release plans.

Soule’s “Light of the Jedi” carries the heaviest lift as the line’s opening adult novel, with Ireland’s “A Test of Courage” and Gray’s “Into the Dark” landing the same window to hook younger readers before the comics from Scott and Older start filling in the gaps between them.