Cartoon Network Removes Clone Wars, Announces New LEGO Star Wars Specials

Because they work so far out from when the show actually airs, and the fact that they will have only aired six episodes from the 26-episode Season Five production cycle (with seven more set to air this season, that means there will be 13 Season Five episodes and three Season Four episodes still left unaired after this season), this show will still be on the air for a while even if they somehow stopped production today. Dave Filoni said in the premiere of RebelForce Radio (from the former Forcecast guys) that he's going to keep making the show until they tell him to stop - hopefully this means all the storylines will be resolved. He also mentioned that George recently sat down with the crew to get a concrete plan of how everything will end up, now that he is (supposedly) going to be less involved. So yeah, it's pretty clear that it's just going to change channels.

I wouldn't think a move to Disney XD would bode well for the show, usually that requires a more extensive cable package than Cartoon Network does. I imagine that would cut viewership.

I paraphrase Obi-Wan: "... as if millions of dollars exchanged hands, then suddenly silence. I fear something terrible will happen." And Anakin had it right: "this is NOT good."

I want to see clone wars taken up to revenge of the sith. And afterwards if so ****ed survives

Originally Posted by Mr. JabbaJohnL

Because they work so far out from when the show actually airs, and the fact that they will have only aired six episodes from the 26-episode Season Five production cycle (with seven more set to air this season, that means there will be 13 Season Five episodes and three Season Four episodes still left unaired after this season), this show will still be on the air for a while even if they somehow stopped production today. Dave Filoni said in the premiere of RebelForce Radio (from the former Forcecast guys) that he's going to keep making the show until they tell him to stop - hopefully this means all the storylines will be resolved. He also mentioned that George recently sat down with the crew to get a concrete plan of how everything will end up, now that he is (supposedly) going to be less involved. So yeah, it's pretty clear that it's just going to change channels.

Season 5 is only 20 episodes, and we're 15 episodes into season 5, not a mere 6 episodes. There's also 3 unscheduled episodes from the season 5 - An Old Friend, The Rise of Clovis, and Crisis at the Heart - and I don't know what other episodes are supposed to be missing. So at this point Disney could just pull the plug instead of putting more money into TCW easily, who knows if those missing scripts have been put into production.

Originally Posted by Umbra

I wouldn't think a move to Disney XD would bode well for the show, usually that requires a more extensive cable package than Cartoon Network does. I imagine that would cut viewership.

Disney XD and Cartoon Network are in the same digital cable package for my area, although not on analog cable which only had Cartoon Network before. But I think digital cable market penetration is pretty high these days, so the question is more about whether a carrier has it in HD or not (mine does).

Originally Posted by JediTricks

Season 5 is only 20 episodes, and we're 15 episodes into season 5, not a mere 6 episodes. There's also 3 unscheduled episodes from the season 5 - An Old Friend, The Rise of Clovis, and Crisis at the Heart - and I don't know what other episodes are supposed to be missing. So at this point Disney could just pull the plug instead of putting more money into TCW easily, who knows if those missing scripts have been put into production.

Where did you see it was only 20 episodes? Only 20 episodes have been announced, and it seems like they're going to end on the Ahsoka arc, so that could make sense.

I was referring to Lucasfilm Animation's production cycles, which include 26 episodes even though CN doesn't air that many - typically 22, which might have started when LFL yanked four Season One episodes out to make the movie. The three Maul/Mandalore episodes were the first ones produced in LFL's Season Five cycle, then followed by D-squad. The Onderon, youngling, and missing Clovis arcs were all produced in LFL's Season Four cycle, which ended with CN's Season Five premiere "Revival" as production number 426. I've been keeping close track of this since the beginning of the show thanks to the episode guides, and the newest Insider includes a list of all the episodes in their production order (which helps fill in a few blanks from my own list). So as I said earlier, there are still 16 episodes left to air from Seasons Four and Five that are at least in some form of production (I'm assuming the Clovis ones were completed), and they're at least working on what they refer to as Season Six now.

Originally Posted by Mr. JabbaJohnL

Where did you see it was only 20 episodes? Only 20 episodes have been announced, and it seems like they're going to end on the Ahsoka arc, so that could make sense.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/The_C...s:_Season_Five
Note that there are not 1 but 2 sources listed on that, the first one is Canadian channel Teletoon's press release.

I was referring to Lucasfilm Animation's production cycles, which include 26 episodes even though CN doesn't air that many - typically 22, which might have started when LFL yanked four Season One episodes out to make the movie. The three Maul/Mandalore episodes were the first ones produced in LFL's Season Five cycle, then followed by D-squad. The Onderon, youngling, and missing Clovis arcs were all produced in LFL's Season Four cycle, which ended with CN's Season Five premiere "Revival" as production number 426. I've been keeping close track of this since the beginning of the show thanks to the episode guides, and the newest Insider includes a list of all the episodes in their production order (which helps fill in a few blanks from my own list). So as I said earlier, there are still 16 episodes left to air from Seasons Four and Five that are at least in some form of production (I'm assuming the Clovis ones were completed), and they're at least working on what they refer to as Season Six now.

Every season has been 22 cycles so far:
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Star_...es%29#Episodes
The production codes don't necessarily correspond to the seasons, sometimes it's about how there might be uses of season budgets or even just fiscal rollovers from year to year being a certain date. Note that the production codes for the movie are 1.01, .03, .04, and .18, while .02 is a standalone episode: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of..._Wars_episodes

The more I look at the production codes rolling from season to season, the more I think it's merely about the end of a fiscal year for the show's budget and has nothing to do with season-to-season airings.

Anyway, as you can see on that Wikipedia listing, we have 5 episodes scheduled to air and 3 more not scheduled to air.

From the current Insider, written by Pablo Hidalgo:

At any given time, there are many episodes of The Clone Wars in different phases of production at Lucasfilm Animation. To stay far ahead of the broadcast schedule, the team produces 26 episodes per season, though typically only 22 air. This creates a cushion of episodes as more seasons air, giving the team the flexibility to swap episodes in order to produce a desired flow of multi-episode arcs.

And now this "cushion of episodes" is naturally larger than it's ever been before.

You're right that the production codes often don't correspond to broadcast seasons, thanks largely to this cushion of episodes, but they're usually produced out of the order they're meant to air (and this can change multiple times, as we've seen often this year). They do this mainly to take advantage of the resources and budget at their disposal - for instance, "Voyage of Temptation" is the middle part of the Season Two Mandalore arc, but it was production number 121 while the others are 213 and 216, and you can notice that when Pre Vizsla appears in the episode he's just a clone trooper body with a wrapping draped around him since they didn't yet have the budget to build the complete model, and he only appears briefly so it doesn't really matter. So obviously they were produced out of the order they were written and intended to be seen (and then things like prequel episodes and weird retcons only complicate matters later). The Christophsis sequence of the film was produced as 118 while the Tatooine and Coruscant stuff was 101, 103, and 104 likely since the Christophsis battle features many more elements than anything else in the film so it was easier to produce the smaller-scale episodes/scenes earlier on in the schedule. So the production season has its roots in fiscal reasons but is still largely intended to correspond with and fill an entire broadcast season.

I understand, but if that were the case they'd be dropping millions of dollars in unaired episodes, and obviously they're not. That'd make for 16 unused episodes by the end of season 5, not the 3 we have here. There are no missing production codes until 4.19-4.21, then 5.03, and finally 5.08 and on haven't been aired. So what I'm saying is that they're not "extra" episodes, the episodes are simply rolled into the following seasons, but up until now there haven't been "missing" episodes, they still correspond 1-26 per season number and they still air.