With The Force Awakens arriving in cinemas in just over two months, and spinoff film Rogue One expected in a year, there is no shortage of big screen Star Wars on the way. Ahead of this, the animated TV series Star Wars: Rebels begins a second season next week, and now producer Simon Kinberg has talked about the possibility of both the films and the show sharing characters.

　　In an interview with The Nerdist, Kinberg explains how carefully the Star Wars story is being mapped out across the entire franchise by Lucasfilm. "The idea of characters actually popping up or transferring from animation to live-action and live-action to animation, we're obviously open to because we have a lot of characters from the original movie and actually prequels who pop up in Rebels as substantial characters," he said.

　　"The thing we're really focused on is just making sure there is real continuity. That it is a unified universe from a story perspective, where anything that happens in Rebels is canon, in the same way as the original movies or prequels, the Clone Wars, and the movies going forward.

　　"There's just a lot of care that's taken to make sure that whatever happens in whatever different story right now is acknowledged, and that it actually feels like a coherent world or galaxy. All of it is incredibly well unified and planned."

　　In 2013, Lucasfilm established the Lucasfilm Story Group, a team of writers whose job it is to maintain narrative consistency across the Star Wars franchise.

　　Star Wars Rebels began life as a 44-minute film, called The Spark of Rebellion, in October 2014, which was followed by a 13-episode series. It is set five years before the original 1977 film, and tells the story of the formation of the Rebellion. The new season begins on October 14, 2015.

　　Star Wars Episode 7 - The Force Awakens is due for release on December 18, 2015, while Rogue One arrives on December 16, 2016.