Star Wars: Visions has captivated audiences around the world by allowing studios from across the globe to share their own interpretations of hope. We had the honor of being in the presence of James Waugh, the executive producer of the series, who answered several questions about the development process, Volumes 1–3, canon, and much more.
Portions of this interview have been lightly edited for clarity with some questions and answers from other outlets being included
Q: What was the decision to bring back and expand on stories from Volume 1 such as “The Duel, Village Bride, and Ninth Jedi”: especially with The Ninth Jedi getting its own standalone series.
James Waugh: I think because those conversations were had early on as we were developing this and looking for the new stories we’d take, we loved working with the creators of all those studios. We loved all of them, but they all had a sort of framework that almost demanded more story for those characters. I think the way we definitely approach development is we sit down in each of the studios and we hear the different directors and the talent that have things to say, like what they want to pitch.
Ronin just felt like such an undeniable framework for continuing storytelling around that character. Junpei [Founder and CEO of Kamikaze Douga] and Okazaki-san [Writer] had a very specific take that they wanted to expand that unique expression of Star Wars with. It was one of those moments of when you hear it, you just kind of know, we have to do that story.
“The Village Bride” became a fan favorite. Everywhere I go, such as San Diego Comic-Con or Celebration, I end up seeing someone cosplaying F and it just feels like this is a character that really resonates. Haga-san has something to say with this character and pitched a really beautiful story, and so that’s why that continued.
When it comes to Production IG, I mean, after seeing the end of “The Ninth Jedi”, it almost speaks for itself. We’ve got to go see him put the nine Jedi together. We’re continuing a story that will also feed into what Visions presents and offers us down the line.
Q: The new episode “Black” that’s being directed by Shinya Ohira-san for Volume 3, has also included students into the animation process. How does it feel to work alongside them?
James Waugh: I think that it’s a great gift for someone of his status, history, and experience to be able to pass on knowledge through the process. To me, I wasn’t deep in the trenches of the actual animation production when it came to what Ohira was doing and how he leveraged the talent he had hired. But I deeply admire it, and I think what I like about him so much is that he’s such a master and legend, who has worked on every movie that had so much influence on me in the anime and Japanese space.
To be able to pass on that knowledge is really special, and to me, that feels very Star Wars. I think the best Star Wars stories are when you have that master-student dynamic. Talent’s one thing, but unless you practice your craft and learn from people who have been down that journey, it’s hard to become a great Jedi. That is really special on his part.
I then followed up, asking if these students were able to learn or input something from the experience.
James Waugh: Yeah, I actually don’t know. I think that because they worked up through his chain and his guidance, they weren’t pitching stories directly. They were executing his vision, but I have no doubt they were learning an absolute ton from him. And I wouldn’t be surprised, to your point, if some of that fresh perspective also infused his choices.
Q: How does it feel to see multiple studios worldwide creating their own interpretations of Star Wars, utilizing their own traditions, languages, and techniques to showcase hope for Volume 2?
James Waugh: Seeing Star Wars expressed through a specific Japanese creator’s lens [in Volume 1] suddenly made us realize how interesting this could be through different cultures. That’s really what drove it. I think what’s foundational about Star Wars is these universal mythic elements — very Campbellian. The hero’s journey does manifest differently across cultures in truth, but there are certain archetypes that matter. There are certain universal human themes that Star Wars articulates in a mythic way really well.
You look at something like “Screecher’s Reach,” and it is very much a Star Wars story, but the banshee elements, which are so inherent to Irish culture, are what made that unique take. And I think that you see the same thing with Punkrobot. Each one of those stories can only come from their culture. At the end of the day, the beauty of Star Wars is that, I think, at its best, the themes are universal. The themes are culturally agnostic.
Q: How was the decision made for balancing stories about the human experiences such as bounty hunters or a mom and daughter interaction that would resonate with fans wanting so many different things?
James Waugh: Yeah. I actually think that’s nice to hear you bring that up because I actually think it’s a perfect example of how we approach development. Josh Rimes, Jackie Lopez, and I, when we’re meeting with these studios and having those early conversations with Aardman, they brought in a bunch of their top directors to just pitch us different stories.
And some of them, I mean, they’re all great pitches. It’s Aardman. You’re going to get good stuff. But a lot of them felt like they were big scope Star Wars stories that feel like that’s what you want to see with Star Wars. But the reason we loved Magda’s story was not that. We knew we would find Star Wars in it, but she pitched a story that was personal.
She was a Polish immigrant to the U.K. and had always felt slightly different growing up within that context. She had this sort of love-hate teen embarrassment of her mom and her mom’s culture, right? And then only to find later in life, that’s the thing that made her special and a unique creator.
And so she wanted to find a Star Wars story to reflect that personal journey. To me, that’s what I’m looking for. I want something that is deeply personal. The Star Wars we have, we’re really good at helping people find the Star Wars. It’s like I will always look for the personal story. The scope of it all, the Star Wars stuff will come. So that’s always the way we approach things. And I think you’ll see the same thing in Volume 3.
Q: Regarding the expanded lore and creativity of the Star Wars universe, how does Lucasfilm juggle being creative without fully breaking established canon?
James Waugh: Well honestly I think the nice thing about Visions is that we’re not trying to make this part of the ongoing canonical narrative. Some of these stories fit perfectly within canon. I mean that’s the thing, we’re not saying don’t do that. I don’t think we’d ever get things like “The Duel” if we tried to fit it into that. We wanted people to celebrate what they love about Star Wars and so you know that was very clearly a love letter to Kurosawa and George Lucas. I’m open to bringing in things from the expanded universe into Visions because it meant something to that person from that cultural perspective.
I think it’s liberating and where we really try to hold the line is in Star Wars. Like if I think Star Wars still speaks at a very universal mythic level and I think it should always do that. And so that’s where we try to find and steer our stories too. But I’m less worried about something directly contradicting something in this space, if the story warrants it within the unique expression of Star Wars Visions.
Q: Why is it called Volumes and not Seasons?
James Waugh: Oh, God, this is a super nerdy answer, but I think we ultimately wanted to connote the idea that these are sort of like mixtapes. These are anthological expressions, not ever-going seasons that are serialized and have a continuing storyline.
Volume 2 is the mixtape that’s sort of like a global tour, involving different sounds and notes from around the world. Volume 1 & Volume 3 are anime-focused. Whatever Visions could evolve into, we want to make it clear that we can still kind of have different, unique voices, and you don’t feel like you have to be bound to what you’ve seen before.
Q: What types of stories did you want to explore with this Volume of Star Wars Visions?
James Waugh: I try not to approach these, as like these are the stories we want to tell. What we wanted to do, again, going back to kind of the mixtape idea, anime is not just, it’s sort of this blanket term for so many different styles and expressions. And there is a unifying thing that brings a lot of these things together, but there are so many different flavors of anime.
We really try to approach it from how we select a studio array and creator array that can give us this, really show, hopefully, a bunch of Star Wars fans that never really got engaged in anime, the opportunity to say “look at this imaginative medium that’s over here. Check this out and look at what it’s capable of.” So that’s really where we started it, is to make sure we had that full breadth of style.
There weren’t specific stories that we were driving at all. What we always drive to is what these creators have to say about the human experience. Everybody kind of had their unique take. What is a little different, I think, about this volume is that Volume 1 is very Jedi heavy — so Jedi-steeped in kyber crystals and lightsabers, and clearly that’s the most iconic aspect of the Star Wars franchise, but it’s a galaxy that’s so much richer than that.
And what I found with this volume is a lot of the stories that sort of bubbled up to the top ended up being more sort of resistance stories or rebel stories or bounty hunter stories. Not to say that there’s no lightsabers throughout it. There most certainly are. But in comparison to the first volume, I think we get a broader picture of what the galaxy can be.
Q: How is it decided for every volume, which animation studio gets an episode, and is there a submission process before it’s approved for each episode?
James Waugh: We have a list. I mean, we’re fans too, right? So some of it has come from, “wow, we really loved that work. We should meet with these people.” I remember seeing Promare and saying, like, “oh, man, we need a meeting with Trigger. That was unlike anything I’d seen before.”
Production IG obviously is just legendary. So some of it came from a fandom of “Let’s Meet With Them”. We also work very closely with Qubic Pictures, who is a good partner and has been a good partner within our Japanese production, and they have great relationships and have made recommendations as well.
Between our own fandom, interests, and good partners, we end up working in conversations with studios. And, again, it’s not always one pitch we’re getting. Sometimes different directors come and pitch us stories. We’re always looking for the stories, again, that have something to say.
So the last thing I want to do is just something that’s just purely an aesthetic thing or just doesn’t – is just visual. I really want each one of these stories to be a unique expression of the creator that’s bringing them. It doesn’t mean that as we’re developing them we’re not involved – We are. And a lot of that is just being good dramaturgs, helping them get the best expression of their story, as I think any good producer should be doing, and helping them find the values that feel resonant with what Star Wars means, those universal themes. But not from a prescriptive place of no, you can’t say that. We wouldn’t have selected that story if we thought we were going to get to that place.
Q: What made Lucasfilm decide that they wanted to bring those past studios back, to work on this new volume?
James Waugh: Well, it’s a good question because it was really clear to us that there were just so many other studios we wanted to work with. We finished Volume 1 and we’re like, oh, man, there’s so many studios that, you know, I still don’t even think we’ve worked with everybody we want to work with in Japan. We’ll see what happens in the future.
But the reason we wanted to work with some of the studios that were returning is they had stories to tell. We had such a good experience with them in Volume 1 that as we were casting for Volume 3 and looking for partners and looking for stories, of course the doors opened to the people that have brought great stories to us in the past. We are a very creator-focused company and really like to build strong relationships with great creators, and we have done that.
You look at something like “The Duel”, and any time you see a whole array of sketches in that first conversation from Takashi Okazaki, it’s like, “Oh, my God, this is amazing.” Well, of course we want to do more with you. And so that’s sort of how it happened.
Each one of these stories started from a place where we loved working with the first time, happy to take this meeting and this conversation, and then they had a different take. But then we wanted to make sure that we brought in some newer studios and voices that we hadn’t worked with in the past. And I’m really glad we did.
Q: With all the studios that you’ve worked with for the past three volumes, is there any animation studio that you look forward to working with in the future, possibly?
James Waugh: Oh, man. Out of the studios that we’ve worked with? That’s a hard question to answer because I definitely want to tip my hat to favorites because they’ve all been uniquely interesting and uniquely talented in their own way.
So I think the easy answer for this, for me, is the one we’re actually moving forward with in a long-form way, is Production IG and Kamiyama-san’s “Ninth Jedi” approach. Ootani is the director for the Vision short that connects to what Visions presents. But I think mostly because there was so much more to say about that short and Kamiyama is such an imaginative thinker and such a good partner. That is definitely a story that I look forward to everybody else seeing, what he has built upon. But, look, it’s hard because you want to do all these things.
I would love to keep doing stories with Ronin. I would love to keep telling stories about F. I’d love to go back to the band from Volume 1. All of these things have the potential.
It’s just there’s limited space to do things. But I think we could re-approach these studios in the future.
Conclusion
Now is the perfect time to dive into both volumes of Star Wars: Visions and get ready for another journey “in a galaxy far, far away,” with Volume 3 set to premiere on October 29 on Disney+. We would like to extend our gratitude to James Waugh, Lucasfilm, the Anime NYC staff, and fellow reporters for this exhilarating press conference.
Images: Star Wars Visions, Star Wars Rebels, Star Wars
© George Lucas, Lucasfilm, Star Wars Visions Project
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