Via Huffingtonpost.com:

When the powers-that-be at Disney & Lucasfilm decided that they wanted to set Star Wars Rebels in that time period between the prequels and the original trilogy, executive producer Dave Filoni knew that this new Disney XD animated series was going to be tough to pull off.

“Look, it’s one thing to do what we did on Star Wars: The Clone Wars. That animated series was set between Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith. So we had a wealth of material to work with,” Filoni explained during a recent phone interview. “We could make use of characters that had previously appeared in the prequels. We could pick up story threads from those two movies. It was a rich, rich vein to explore.”

“Whereas with Rebels … Going into this project, once we decided that its story should begin four years before the events of A New Hope … Well, my biggest fear as we began developing this show is that I didn’t want to repeat what George (Lucas) had already done,” Dave continued. “I mean, I didn’t want us inventing another Luke Skywalker. Luke is the chosen one. Luke is the son of Darth Vader. So given that Rebels is set in the particular time period in Star Wars history, I wondered how we could tell a story with this new animated series that would be truly unique and — at the same time — not duplicate what George had already done with the original trilogy?”

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