Our Disney Bothan friend, Sean, sent us a link to Blue Sky Disney which is an inside scoop blog on the Walt Disney Company. See below for a couple of Lucasfilm related news items from their rather extensive update on the site:

"As we said earlier, the main focus of noticeable expansion over the next few years will be Tommowland. It should all get started late next year when the work begins on Star Tours. If current schedule is kept, the area will under tarps by this time next year. George Lucas is working with Disney on some very interesting designs for the sequel to the original ride. Hopefully it won't end up like watching the Phantom Menace when we see it though. There should be a great deal of Star Wars Galaxy promoting starting next year... scratch that. I should say a lot of Lucasfilm promotion throughout the park, but by the end of the decade you can expect to see that Galaxy far, far away quite often when you come to Anaheim. Even more so if ABC is able to land the rights to the Clone Wars animated show. This is far from a done deal, but Disney really wants to show Mr. Lucas that it more than Fox is the place he should park his little show. As well as the makeover of Star Tours, expect several dining and retail concepts that have been floating around to adorn the area around the new ST ride. As for when it'll be finished, I'm not privy to exact dates, but the Bothans seem to suggest that it'll be between a twelve and eighteen month renovation. The exact dates and duration should become clearer in the early part of next year."

"Expect a big promotion for the new Indy film to begin in late March/early April. The area will start off with modest references to the new film and several promotional events should start to appear by May. The park that really gets to take advantage of Mr. Jones is TDS, being as it's name is almost that of the movie, the OLC is going to want a great deal of cross-promotion with the film. Disney and Lucas seem only too happy to help out..."

Click here to see the full post.


Thanks Sean!


UPDATE: Our friend Patrick of Bentonville, AR stumbled across an article at CNet.com about ILM's Hayden Landis. Hayden was the computer graphics supervisor for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. You can see the article right here. How does this pertain to Disney and Star Wars? See the excerpt below from the end of the article.

"Next up for Landis is another nostalgia-oriented project--a redo of the Star Tours ride at Disneyland."


Sweet! Thanks Patrick!


UPDATE #2: Our friend Jeremy forwarded over the following link to thedisneyblog.com where John Frost notes the article mentioned in the update above as well as offers up some speculation as to what we might expect from the Star Tours update. Click here.


Thanks Jeremy!