ESPN, Lucasfilm Workforce Up For ‘Star Wars’ Super Bowl Telecast
ESPN is bringing the Force to the Super Bowl. The sports activities community, Lucasfilm, Disney and the NFL will crew up for Star Wars Funday Football, a real-time animated alternate presentation of Super Bowl LXI set within the Star Wars universe, streaming Feb. 14, 2027, on Disney+ and the ESPN App and airing on Disney Channel and Disney XD.
The presentation will re-create each play of the sport, turning gamers into animated avatars and bringing characters from throughout the Lucasfilm franchise into key moments. Anthony Daniels, who has performed C-3PO for the reason that authentic 1977 Star Wars, will return to voice the protocol droid for the printed. ESPN has but to announce the total roster of characters, the animated setting or the commentators for the alternate telecast.
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The particular will run alongside ESPN’s conventional Super Bowl broadcast, which can characteristic Joe Buck, Troy Aikman, Lisa Salters and Laura Rutledge from SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, Calif. The sport will air on ESPN and ABC and stream on Disney+. The animated model will likely be out there dwell in transnational exchanges as properly, with on-demand entry on Disney+ shortly after the sport bringing its attain to greater than 155 exchanges worldwide, based on ESPN.
The crossover marks the primary animated alternate presentation of a Super Bowl and the most recent enlargement of ESPN’s Funday Football franchise, which has beforehand reimagined NFL video games within the worlds of Toy Story, The Simpsons and Monsters, Inc.
The inaugural Toy Story Funday Football, which remodeled the Atlanta Falcons-Jacksonville Jaguars sport in October 2023 right into a dwell animated expertise, received three Sports Emmy Awards. The Simpsons Funday Football adopted in December 2024, placing characters from the long-running Fox animated sequence into the Bengals-Cowboys matchup. Last December’s Monsters Funday Football introduced Mike Wazowski and Sulley into the Eagles-Chargers sport.
The broadcasts use real-time information and animation expertise from Sony’s Beyond Sports, combining NFL Next Gen Stats player-tracking data with Sony’s Hawk-Eye Innovations optical monitoring to translate on-field motion right into a digital setting. The expertise permits the animated presentation to reflect the dwell sport because it unfolds reasonably than present a pre-produced recreation.
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The Star Wars version additionally lands throughout a big yr for Lucasfilm’s flagship franchise. The firm will have fun the fiftieth anniversary of Star Wars in 2027, with a newly restored model of the unique 1977 movie returning to theaters for a restricted engagement on Feb. 19, simply 5 days after the Super Bowl.
The animated broadcast is a part of ESPN’s broader effort to provide viewers extra methods to look at its first Super Bowl. In addition to the primary telecast, ESPN has introduced Super Bowl LXI with Peyton and Eli on ESPN2, Super Bowl LXI Field Pass with The Pat McAfee Show on ESPNU and Super Bowl LXI Playbook with Next Gen Stats on NFL Network.
Disney can also be folding Star Wars into its soccer protection within the months main as much as the sport. Beginning Oct. 20, ESPN’s day by day SportsMiddle program on Disney+, SC+, will characteristic “Hyperspace Highlights,” presenting performs from Monday Night Football with a Star Wars visible therapy. Starting Oct. 26, the present may also characteristic an animated Darth Vader interviewing an NFL participant collaborating in that night time’s sport.
For Disney, the mission brings two main properties collectively at a second when ESPN is getting ready for a milestone of its personal: Super Bowl LXI would be the first Super Bowl produced by ESPN, and the primary to air on ABC since 2006. The Star Wars alternate telecast provides the corporate a franchise-driven method to prolong the occasion throughout its sports activities, streaming and family-entertainment platforms.
This article was initially printed on Forbes.com
