Confirmed! Star Wars 'toon in cinemas

It’s been floating around the rumour-strewn space lanes of the Internet for a few days, but Lucasfilm has just laid the official smack down: the 3D animated Star Wars: The Clone Wars cartoon will have its first screening in cinemas before arriving on telly.

There’s no official confirmation on the length (current intelligence tells us it’s the first three 30-minute episodes spliced together), but it’ll be hitting screens across the pond on 15 August, with a premiere over here shortly afterwards. "I felt there were a lot more Star Wars stories left to tell," blabs King Beard George Lucas in a statement. "I was eager to start telling some of them through animation and, at the same time, push the art of animation forward." Tell that to Pixar, George.

Many Bothans suffered sprained wrists to bring us this information and there’s a new video short about the series up on the Star Wars official site.