Last summer, three new books connected to The Mandalorian were announced. The first, Phil Szostak’s The Art of The Mandalorian (Season One), was released in December. It appears that the other two never will be.
Today, DK Books provided us this update on Pablo Hidalgo’s The Mandalorian: The Ultimate Visual Guide:
At the same time, Del Rey had basically the same announcement about Adam Christopher’s Mandalorian novel:
Now I should mention that both of these announcements say that these books won’t be published “at this time,” so I suppose that does leave the door open for them being published at some point in the future… however, that’s certainly not the indication here. From the sound of it, they’ve been cancelled. Del Rey added that they’re looking to get Christopher involved in another project. At the same time, with how awesome the Visual Guides are, I wouldn’t be shocked to see it release at some point down the road. But it would surely be a very different version than would be released now.
And here’s why: the reason given for these cancellations is “as the story continues to unfold on screen.” So no, this doesn’t seem to have anything to do with Gina Carano’s firing (and a source close to Disney Publishing reiterated to io9 that it’s not related to Carano but instead due to scheduling). We don’t need to pretend like there is any sort of conspiracy theory going on to cancel Cara Dune or anything, because the reasoning given makes tons of sense. Last June, when these projects were announced, we only had The Mandalorian season two coming out. Now, we’re looking forward to The Mandalorian season three, but also The Book of Boba Fett, Ahsoka, and Rangers of the New Republic. And if the show continues to be popular, I doubt it’ll stop there. So in other words, the story is continuing to unfold on screen rather than in publishing. Just like these announcements said.
It’s unfortunate, but it’s business. I hope that we’ll get more tie-in material with The Mandalorian at some point that’s not just on-screen shows, but for now, it seems that the focus is on telling stories via the live-action media on Disney+.
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