Star Wars Episode VII and Beyond Will Not Adhere to Expanded Universe Canon

While it was expected, the other shoe has finally dropped and Simon Kinberg, who is working on Star Wars sequels and spinoffs with J.J. Abrams, Lawrence Kasdan and others, revealed to IGN this weekend at WonderCon that the Star Wars  Expanded Universe novels, comics and other stories will hold no sway in the new movies. "You know, it's not off-limits, and it's certainly inspiring — I'm working on an animated show for [Lucasfilm] as well, Star Wars Rebels, that will take inspiration from everywhere, but — I know for the movies, the canon is the canon, and the canon is the six films that exist," Kinberg said. Kinberg also said that for himself, Abrams, Kasdan, writer Michael Arndt and Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy, the new films are "all about honoring the original movies, and yet wanting to take a step forward, too, and tell a new story." Kinberg apparently appointed himself the dasher of fanboy hopes this weekend; before revealing that there would be no role for the Expanded Universe in the Star Wars sequels, he similarly said that the Fantastic Four reboot, which he wrote, is in no position to be tied into the X-Men franchise anytime soon. "The idea of potentially having a crossover movie is very appealing but we'd have to figure it out, because there's an inherent challenge to combining Fantastic Four and X-Men in the movie universe because they sort of exist in different planes or dimensions even," Kinberg said. "In the Fantastic Four world, it's a contemporary world, there's no mention of mutants because otherwise they wouldn't be that 'fantastic.' And in the X-Menworld, as we've seen, there aren't famous, celebrity-superhero Fantastic Four." Star Wars: Episode VII opens Dec. 18, 2015.