Interview: John Jackson Miller discusses transition from EU to Disney

I had the pleasure of interviewing Star Wars author John Jackson Miller at Dragon Con for the publication The Geeky Waffle. In the 16-minute interview, we covered a wide range of topics from Star Wars Rebels, the Kenobi novel and how it inspired the Obi-Wan Kenobi series, Rae Sloane’s motivations, and Miller’s passion for comic circulation.

One of the most fascinating parts of the interview was discussing the transition of his work after the Disney acquisition and how it impacted his writing of Star Wars: A New Dawn. Miller stated:

"“It was just one more level of people looking at things… Geroge Lucas was probably not returning to Star Wars for anything, and we were very close to not being the only game in town.”"

He continued about the transition, saying:

"“What happen with A New Dawn… it was a case I was 2/3 of the way through working on that novel, and I noticed we were doing something unusual with it. Because it was a prequel to the Rebels TV series, I was being overseen by people who were aware of the TV show. So, I had Dave Filoni, Greg Weisman, and Simon Kinberg who were all looking at the outlines, and they would suggest possible things that I could write about where I wouldn’t collide with things.”"

He then dove into working with the Lucasfilm Story Group and the process of transitioning from the Extended Universe to the current canon, saying:

"“I had this conference call with what turned out to be the Lucasfilm Story Group as this book is developing… They say ‘Hey, we need you to come out to Lucasfilm, because you’re going to end up doing a video with, as it turned out, Timothy Zahn.’ And we ended up doing a video about declaring everything prior to A New Dawn [as] Legends, and everything forward is part of the Lucasfilm Story Group era so to speak.Basically, what is means now is that there are people in the Story Group that have an eye on everything that is going on in other parts of the franchise, films, TV, other things, toys, action figures, the backs of the cards even! They can actually cue us in on opportunities and things to avoid. That is something that did happen before [in the EU], but this is a little bit more structured, I would say.”"

The entire interview is terrific, especially as John Jackson Miller dives into his passion for comic circulation. You can check out the full interview below or at The Geeky Waffle YouTube channel.