Embracing May the Fourth once again, Lucasfilm promises quite the treat for 2023: Star Wars: Visions Volume 2!! After the first batch was such a big hit, it made sense to return to the idea and explore new studios as well. I had some hopes we’d see some returning studios to deliver follow-ups to their memorable and unique stories, but from the list of studios involved, I’m sure we’ll have new favorites once the next Visions Volume drops! Head below for the list of studios and the titles {plus details on the writer/directors} of the upcoming shorts.
Here’s the list:
“Sith”
By El Guiri {Spain}, with writer-director Rodrigo Blaas. He has quite the resume, including Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Ratatouille, and Wall-E before creating the studio bringing us this short.
“Screecher’s Reach”
By Cartoon Saloon {Ireland}, directed by Paul Young. He’s a co-founder of Cartoon Saloon, which is known for films like My Father’s Dragon and WolfWalkers.
“In the Stars”
By Punkrobot {Chile} with writer-director Gabriel Osorio, who’s direction children’s TV while his 2016 short film Bear Story won an Oscar.
“I Am Your Mother”
By Aardman {UK}, directed by Magdalena Osinska. The studio is best known for Wallace & Gromit, of which she has directed two commercials with. The official site also tells us she’s working on an interesting feature film Jasia, “based on her grandmother’s memories of WWII Poland.” The studio took to Twitter to tease they used a new type of animation for the short and that it may involve Ben Solo!!! Wish we had more teases like this already from other studios.
“Journey to the Dark Head”
By Studio Mir {South Korea}, directed by Hyeong Guen Park. It seems he’s been involved with cinematic game trailers and now most recently the animated series Lookism, though the studio is probably best known for Legend of Korra!! One of two shorts where, on name alone, I’m very curious about!!
“The Spy Dancer”
By Studio La Cachette {France}, with writer-director Julien Chheng. Having trained at Disney at one point, he co-founded the studio and won an Emmy for Genndy Tartakovsky’s Primal. The studio has also been involved with stuff like Love, Death, & Robots. This is the other one where the name really sticks out to me.
“The Bandits of Golak”
By 88 Pictures {India}, directed by Ishan Shukla. Ishan has an adult-orientated animated feature film called Schirkoa hitting festivals summer 2023, while the studio has helped on stuff like Trollhunters for Netflix.
“The Pit”
By D’ART Shtajio {Japan} alongside Lucasfilm Ltd, with writer-director-executive producer LeAndre Thomas, co-director Justin Ridge. Thomas has independent films but also is part the franchise studio team for Lucasfilm Ltd (credited on The Mandalorian, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Tales of the Jedi, to name a few). Ridge should be familiar for his work on Star Wars Resistance, Rebels, and even Avatar: The Last Airbender. The studio itself has worked on or helped with stuff like The Weekend’s “Snowchild” music video, Attack on Titan, One Piece, and more.
“Aau’s Song”
By Triggerfish {South Africa}, with writer-directors Nadia Darries and Daniel Clarke. Both have quite impressive sounding resumes with Nadia animating some of the studio’s award-winning BBC films, while Clarke started at the studio, serving more as a director for some of their projects. I found it interesting the official site says Darries has, “…an avocation for songwriting,” which looks like it’ll come in handy given the short’s name.
This is quite the list and I’m already hyped given how great Volume 1 turned out to be, though until we get some footage or actual details on what the shorts are about, it’ll be hard to see how different and interesting these all might turn out. I suspect we might not get a trailer until April or so, but until then, might not be a bad time to rewatch Volume 1, check out our reviews of the shorts, the stunningly excellent novel continuation of one of them (and its great prequel comic), and even of the “Art of” book! So as you can tell, we’ll be all in on this next batch of shorts! May 4 can’t come soon enough.
Ryan is Mynock Manor’s Head Butler. You can follow him on Twitter @BrushYourTeeth. You can follow the website on Twitter @MynockManor and Instagram @mynockmanor.