“Star Wars Holiday Special” Animation Producer at Fan Expo Canada

The Star Wars Holiday Special has been the punchline of a thousand jokes, an uneasy meshing of sci-fi and broad comedy. But one of the glimmers of inspiration were the animated sequence, featuring a new bounty hunter character, Boba Fett.

A small Canadian studio named Nelvana was hired on the strength of the special A Cosmic Christmas, which George Lucas saw on television. Holiday Special‘s Canadian director David Acomba knew the owners, and so the company was hired over the protests of the CBS producers, according to Mental Floss. The company would go on to animate the Droids and Ewoks TV series.

Fast forward to next weekend, at Fan Expo Canada.

Today, the largest pop culture convention in the country updated their schedule to announce that Nelvana CEO and co-founder Michael Hirsh and co-founder Clive Smith are doing a panel called Animation Nation, which will include a screening of “The Faithful Wookiee,” putting it in the context of the studio’s larger story, in conjunction with Hirsh’s autobiography Animation Nation.

Hirsh executive produced over 5000 live action or animated television episodes, as well as some feature films, later taking over rival animation studio Cinar, which became Cookie Jar Entertainment (2004-2012).

After decades of denial by Lucasfilm, The Faithful Wookiee is slowly being accepted by Disney: in 2022, Golden Books adapted the story in print. It’s also available on Disney+.

DisKingdom has compiled a full schedule of Disney, Marvel, and Star Wars programming.