Movies

'The Mandalorian' Visual Guide Will Not Arrive This Year; Original Novel Not Moving Forward, Either

The Mandalorian Ultimate Visual Guide
By Ben Pearson

Apologies to fans of The Mandalorian, but we have some disappointing news from the publishing world. The Mandalorian Ultimate Visual Guide, a deep dive into the lore and minutiae depicted in Lucasfilm's first live-action Star Wars series, has been canceled...at least for the time being. And that's not all: an original novel set in the world of the show has also been scrapped. Read on to learn the reason why.

DK Books, the company that was poised to publish author Pablo Hidalgo's deep dive into the foreground and background aspects of the series, announced today that they "will no longer be publishing The Mandalorian Ultimate Visual Guide at this time," citing the "ever-expanding world" of the show which "continues to unfold on screen."

Meanwhile, author Adam Christopher was slated to write an original novel set in The Mandalorian timeline, and that, too, has been canceled – or perhaps indefinitely delayed. As you can see from the tweet, Christopher is already hard at work on a different Star Wars-related book from Del Ray, so hopefully fans of his won't have to wait too long for more information about that.

Reading between the lines, these cancelations (or delays, or whatever they end up being) seem like a direct result of Lucasfilm's decision to use The Mandalorian as a jumping-off point for more Star Wars shows set in a galaxy far, far away. At last December's investor event, Disney announced two Mandalorian spin-offs: there's Rangers of the New Republic, which reportedly was going to star Gina Carano's Cara Dune character before the company parted ways with Carano over her social media posts. And there's also Ahsoka, which will follow Rosario Dawson's Ahsoka Tano character in live-action that's set within the timeline of The Mandalorian. And don't forget about The Book of Boba Fett, which debuts later this year, and The Mandalorian season 3, which will drop at some point in 2022.

That's an awful lot of story set in one relatively small period of time in that fictional universe. I imagine Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni, the architects of this corner of the universe, looking at the giant task ahead of them, glancing over at these books that were supposed to be published, and quickly waving them out of existence (at least for a while) because it's not worth a canonical detail from these books potentially boxing them out of a specific story they want to tell a year or two down the line. Hopefully fans will get to see them at some point, but right now, it certainly seems like the shows themselves are taking priority.

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