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Add C-3PO to the list of popular Disney personalities who will be guiding football fans through sundry telecasts of ESPN’s coverage of Super Bowl LXI in 2027.
The golden droid, a mainstay of Disney’s “Star Wars” movies
from Lucasfilm, will play a significant role in a real-time, animated telecast of the Big Game that will be set in the “universe” of the movie franchise and air across Disney+, Disney Channel, Disney XD and the ESPN App on Sunday, February 14. Actor Anthony Daniels, who originally played the character, will take part in the spectacle. Meanwhile,five other productions of the 2027 Super Bowl are slated for ESPN, ABC, ESPN2 and ESPNU, among other Disney media properties.
The animated telecast, dubbed “Star Wars Funday Football,” will recreate every play of Super Bowl LXI as it happens, but transform players on the field into animated avatars. Characters from “Star Wars” will sub in at key moments and surprise nods to the films will appear throughout the match. Disney is able to transform live gameplay into animation by combining player tracking data from the NFL’s Next Gen Stats and Sony’s Hawk-Eye Innovations optical tracking.
The company said it expects to unveil more details, such as visual settings, commentators and characters, in weeks to come.
Disney continues to broaden the viewing options for its airing of Super Bowl LXI, the first gridiron classic the company has had under its purview in about two decades. Earlier this month, Disney tapped outspoken host Pat McAfee to anchor “Field Pass,” a commentary-driven option, that will play alongside a traditional broadcast of the Big Game on ABC and ESPN, and a Super Bowl version of the popular “ManningCast” featuring Peyton and Eli Manning, on ESPN2. The company will offer a statistics-focused Super Bowl telecast, “Playbook,” which will be led by a team to be announced later, and air on NFL Network, as well as a Spanish-language telecast on ESPN Deportes.
A Super Bowl “mega cast” has been in consideration at the company since 2021,when Disney struck a new rights deal with the NFL that keeps “Monday Night Football” on the air at ESPN through 2033. Since that time, the league and the company have become even closer, with the league taking a 10% stake in ESPN as part of a deal that put NFL Network and NFL RedZone under the ESPN umbrella.
Other companies have tried to interest TV’s smallest viewers in the biggest annual event the medium has to offer. The media conglomerate previously known as Paramount aired a kids’ version of the Super Bowlon Nickelodeon in 2024. Disney, meanwhile, has at various moments over the years tapped animated figures ranging from the “Toy Story” crew to “Big City Green” characters to Marvel superheroes to create bespoke NFL, NHL and NBA games for the wee set.
Five days after the company airs its growing array of Super Bowl telecasts, Lucasfilm will celebrate 50 years of the “Star Wars” franchise by putting a restored version of the original 1977 movie in theaters, starting Friday, February 19.
