While Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge won’t arrive to Disney’s Hollywood Studios or Disneyland until 2019, but the creative team behind the new planet they’re building now has a name. Be prepared to visit Batuu, a planet on the edge of the Star Wars galaxy.
The detail was revealed to visitors to Star Tours – The Adventures Continue at both the Orlando and California parks on Friday morning. Visitors riding the ride found themselves landing unexpectedly on a planet in the outer rim of the Star Wars galaxy – a planet known to C-3PO, and now to us, as Batuu.
Previously revealed about Batuu has been its back story.
When it opens, the 14-acre area at Disney’s Hollywood Studios, as well as its counterpart in California, will take guests into a new planet in the Star Wars universe.
“We wanted to build new Star Wars stories, new Star Wars destinations, but this time you could be in that story that required us to go to a new place,” Trowbridge said at Star Wars Celebration earlier this year. “It’s a new planet. It’s a new place. It’s this remote frontier outpost.” Lucasfilm creative executive Pablo Hildalgo added, “With every new Star Wars story it’s like coming back home but finding a new corner of that home you’ve never explored before. When it came to developing this location…not only figuring out where this place is on the galactic map but what its history has been throughout galactic history.
“It’s been there for thousands and thousands of years,” Hidalgo explained, “You’re going to discover that. You’re going to be able to get a sense of the history of the place when you go there.”
The planet is in the Star Wars universe’s Outer Rim in the Unknown Regions.
“This used to be a vibrant trading port back in the old sub-lightspeed days, but now with advent of hyperspace, its prominence has kind of fallen and faded a little bit which has made it a great spot for those who didn’t want to be on that kind of mainstream path,” Trowbridge said. “The smugglers, the bounty hunters, the rogue adventurers looking to crew up, the people who don’t want to be found — basically all the interesting people.”
The addition to both parks is the largest expansion of any theme park Disney has ever undertaken. It will open at Disneyland first in 2019 followed by Hollywood Studios.