May I say I'm super sad about this? We won't be getting anymore novels for a very long time and I had been hoping maybe this would happen in 2021, but with how book publishing works + the pandemic + Nomura's 2022 microman--synergy, I am not going to hold my breath

:c

I continue to be shocked that SE didn't just put a hard stop to this after they found out a random children's author boldly proclaimed she was introducing new canon to the series.

If Disney greenlit it, probably not a whole lot Square can do about it.

A round of applause for the person greenlighting requests from authors to license their properties I guess, as I doubt the people actually involved with KH at Disney were actually involved with this decision.

This is sad. I was looking forward to her additions to the canon.

As somebody who has been sitting and reading all of the most recent "what if" and "Twisted" Disney novels, I'm honestly fine with whatever Vitale has cooked up for fans. I have little expectations for it, but I would hope it would be a fun read.

Nomura, if he cared or was upset by it, could cause enough ruckus to make something happen. He's done it before with the animated series stuff (especially in the last 5 years or so where he got Disney to shut down any outside pitches for one).

But he is also just as likely to not care because he'd be doing his own thing...and yeah you're right Disney will do whatever they please. They have worked their way around the very weird merchandising agreement they had with SE and have gotten away with a lot by just selling their IP license in bulk with KH included in that, which is how publishers like Scholastic will get to publish KH books.

Honestly after reading this thread, I’m more curious and want this more than ever.

Ah so this is why we haven't heard anything about the books last year.

I am a bit surprised the pandemic would be an issue for these books

There was this but we don't know if it was for the book or not.

In general it can take 1-3 years or even more for books to get published after being completed, and with the pandemic coming around and disrupting the ability to print and circulate books, publishers had to make the choice to prioritize books that were probably either already going to print or had a higher chance of higher sales.

If you haven't noticed, books are going out of print left and right right now, and newer books are having even smaller early print runs than normal.

I wouldn't be surprised if Vitale's series either gets pushed out to 2022 (a great time to capitalize on anniversary hype, and we would hope Scholastic's marketing team has done the research to be aware of it. also we'd hope that the world is in a better place overall by then) or it just never releases (which would absolutely suck for her because atm this would be her first credited novel series and she's probably put a lot of work into it)

I'm not much of an avid reader, so I wasn't aware of most of this. I guess most of the writing is done in that case, just the actual publishing of the books is being held up by the pandemic.

I do hope they can siege on the anniversary and release then would be a nice way to celebrate 20 years.

Yeah, typically when listings go up for books, it is because they are already finished and have been sitting in a queue/on a schedule of sorts to get released, are likely nearly completed, or are part of some sort of book deal.

When this listing went up in 2019, it could have very well have been done for a long time before that or on its way to being complete.

Yeah! Let's hope!

I honestly forgot about this simply because it just kinda didn't get any info outside of its announcement.

Now I'm wondering how the pandemic can put a book series on hold before its even being published.

Edit: nvm, spock already said why.

The only time I ever remember a Kingdom Hearts project being greenlit without Square Enix's involvement was Kingdom Hearts V-Cast.

I also remember this cancelled Kingdom Hearts project.

[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.kh13.com/news/disney-was-developing-a-kingdom-hearts-title-for-ios-android-named-kingdom-hearts-fragmented-keys-in-2013-now-cancelled/[/URL]

Knowing that she's safe and healthy this pandemic is enough reason for me to be happy. It means she will still be able to continue her job as it is when the time comes that this Covid-19 become less of our concern.

She’s probably hard at work writing and editing all sorts of things. It’s just Scholastic really that has put things on hold.

So, wait, are these books going to be official canon? Even if Nomura isn't involved?

“official canon” like if Nomura doesn’t directly contradict it, you can believe in it being a thing somewhere out there. Y’know, like how most of any of Disney’s expanded media works. Everything supplemental can, in theory, be canon until it isn’t lolol

Isn't that around the time Disney decided to stop making games themselves. So that might have been a factor in it's cancellation, as well as the fact that Chi was being ported to smartphones around then too.

That's unfortunate to hear, but completely understandable given everything going on in the world. I feel bad that the author can't share her work with us yet, but I'm intrigued to find out what this project is all about in the future!

I didn't even know this existed until now. But now that I'm aware of it, I must say that I'm intrigued and hopefully it actually gets released someday.

Fragmented Keys was so fake dude

Just look at the "concept art"

Yeah, I think that definitely factored into the cancellation alongside the fact that Disney probably didn't want to unintentionally tarnish the Kingdom Hearts brand and their relationship with Tetsuya Nomura.



The developer that was assigned to make the game is definitely real and the linked article talks about verifying the legitimacy of the leaker who released the information about the game.

[URL unfurl="true"]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wideload_Games[/URL]

While I didn’t believe the concept stuff when I saw it way back when, I’m 100% certain it was real. There was a real developer working on a mobile KH game. And like Alpha Baymax has shown, they have been public about their work on it.

I find it very very difficult to believe given what we were shown from that game.

The current version of the article cut the identity of the dev they spoke with, who I did look into at the time, finding nothing definitive from his social pages, which I can't even find now.

Furthermore, KH13 also reported on GFL Animation Studios providing the art for the game.
the time[/URL], their official site (a Blogger page) had a section for their work at Disney Interactive (not just Kingdom Hearts). Today, there is no mention on that site of Disney Interactive nor any of those projects. Their pages for Kingdom Hearts, "Epic Disney," and "Thor" are gone. The "Star Wars Cartoon Concept" panel is now renamed "Star Wars Inspired Art 1" and "Star Wars Death Star" to "Star Wars Inspired Art 2."
And these changes were already made by the next Wayback capture in May, only a few months after the article published.
(I've just sent an email to GFL hoping to get an explanation. Fingers crossed.)

Maybe Wideload was working on something.
But I simply cannot bring myself to believe it. It just has that stink to it.

Let's be honest here, the concept art alone kinda knocked that thing down about 10 pegs due to how fake it looked.

Like, pretty sure one had two of the same genie render at once, another had the KH3 logo for some reason, and another had Game Central Station but with a Station of Awakening from DeviantArt.

Glad to know that this is still happening, even if it is on hold. I’m curious to see how these books give their take on the KH series.

I don't think those nasty screenshots were real but there was a mobile project at Disney for KH in development. That was all I meant.

I'm sure it's not buried, but I'm feeling some variation of the Streisand effect. I want to know what was in the book.

The contents of the black box.

If only?

If it is, then that's way better news than what I had thought in mind. Pretty much excited about this upcoming project!