Star Wars TV series in the works for Disney's Netflix rival streaming service

Disney and LucasFilm are working on a live-action Star Wars television series for the company's planned streaming service, set to launch by the end of 2019. The project was revealed by Disney CEO Bob Iger during a quarterly earnings call.

At this early stage there are no details regarding the show's plot, who will be bringing it to life or how it will fit in with the expanding Star Wars universe, but its ties to the episodic Skywalker-centric films is likely to be minimal.

The earnings call also coincided with news that The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson is to produce an entirely new Star Wars trilogy, as well as write and direct ots first instalment.

Star Wars TV series have existed and thrived before, most notably the animated Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels series, but despite demand there's never been a live action counterpart.

During the call, Iger also revealed plans to develop TV spin-offs for Pixar classic Monsters Inc and High School Musical, as well as more shows within the Marvel Universe.

Marvel is currently producing multiple shows for a string of networks and streaming platforms: Agents of SHIELD for ABC, Runaways for Hulu, Legion for FX, The Gifted for Fox and Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, The Defenders and The Punisher for Netflix.

Earlier this year Disney confirmed its intention to pull all its TV series and films from streaming services such as Netflix and Hulu, ahead of the launch of its own, as-of-yet unnamed service.

Such a service would include Disney's enormous catalogue of beloved films, as well as decades-worth of TV series made for the Disney Channel and films from Marvel, LucasFilm and Pixar.

Iger said in the call that Disney's platform would be "substantially cheaper" than Netflix, which currently charges $10.99 / £5.99 a month for its basic package.

Star Wars continues to grow and expand five years after Disney purchased LucasFilm for $4bn. The Last Jedi is nearing release with three further films planned beyond that, as well as three more in the form of Rian Johnson's trilogy.

Next year will see the release of Solo: A Star Wars Story, directed by Ron Howard after the high-profile departure of original directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller. In 2019 JJ Abrams will conclude the current trilogy in Episode 9 and a third spin-off film – believed to be about Obi-Wan Kenobi – will follow that.