A universe once separated along two disparate lines – that of George Lucas’ film ideas and the ones present in the Expanded Universe – is about to be unified. That’s according to Leland Chee, who’s part of the Lucasfilm Story Group, a team set up to oversee the interweaving narratives we’ll see over the next few years.

“[The] Story Group has a hand in all facets of Star Wars storytelling, including movies, TV, games and publishing,” Chee wrote in a series of recent posts on Twitter. “More so than ever, the canon field will serve us internally simply for classification rather than setting hierarchy.”

Further, Chee stated that, in its new home at Disney, the Star Wars universe would form one coherent whole – meaning that he and his team of story builders are now free to take ideas, characters and stories from the Expanded Universe of books, comics and games and fold them in to what will become Star Wars: Episode VII and its potentially huge range of spin-offs, sequels and other media exploits.

It’s a logical enough move, yet one which could have fascinating and far-reaching effects on the Star Wars saga in the years to come. The news comes shortly after the announcement that, as of 2015, Marvel will be publishing all future Star Wars comic books – which will no doubt make it even easier to retain a sense of coherence in the franchise’s universe with all the media under one banner.