The Walt Disney Co. announced today that production had begun on Star Wars Rebels, a new animated series that will have its one-hour premiere on the Disney Channel in the fall of 2014 followed by a regular half-hour animated series that will appear on Disney XD channels around the world.   In addition to a press release, LucasFilm has released a video with Pablo Hidalgo talking with Star Wars Rebel producer Dave Filoni about the new series.

Screenwriter Simon Kinberg (X-Men First Class, Sherlock Holmes, Mr. and Mrs. Smith), who is also consulting on the new live-action Star Wars movies, is writing the first episode and functioning as an executive producer with Dave Filoni, who was a supervising director on Star Wars: The Clone Wars since 2008, and animation veteran Greg Weisman (Gargoyles, Young Justice, The Spectacular Spider-Man).  In a move that should reassure fans, Star Wars Rebels will be produced by LucasFilm Animation with a team that includes “many of the key talents that made the Star Wars: The Clone Wars series.”
 
Star Wars Rebels will be set during the two decade span between Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith and Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope.  This is an era during which the Empire is securing its grip on the galaxy and hunting down the last of the Jedi Knights as a fledgling rebellion against the Empire begins to take shape.  After the cancellation of the popular Star Wars: The Clone Wars series, Disney, which had just acquired LucasFilm, promised a new Star Wars animated series set in an era that had been unexplored by Star Wars movies or TV programming (see "New Direction for 'Star Wars' Animation"), and Star Wars Rebels fits that description to a "T".