The idea for a live-action Star Wars show has been in development for years under Star Wars creator George Lucas, and now that Disney’s recent $4 billion acquisition of the massively popular sci-fi franchise is complete, ABC is taking a look at the long-awaited series, said the network’s entertainment president Paul Lee in an interview with Entertainment Weekly.
“We’d love to do something with Lucasfilm, we’re not sure what yet,” said Lee. “We haven’t even sat down with them. We’re going to look at [the live-action series], we’re going to look at all of them, and see what’s right. We weren’t able to discuss this with them until [the acquisition] closed and it just closed. It’s definitely going to be part of the conversation.”
Despite years of rumors and hype — and the enlistment of talent that EW says included Battlestar Galactica producer Ron Moore — the series never quite made its way to the small screen, which Lucas repeatedly attributed to the stumbling block of financial costs for special effects.
“We just can’t figure out a way of doing that for less than $50 million an episode, and obviously we can’t afford to do that,” Lucas told IGN in 2010. “I’m not going to compromise on the quality of it, so we just have to keep working on the technology to see if we can improve ways of getting the story told without it costing a fortune.”
In 2011, Lucas announced that 50 scripts for hour-long episodes had already been written for a series tentatively titled Star Wars: Underworld, which would take place between Episode III and Episode IV. Star Wars producer Rick McCallum, who said they hoped to shoot the series in Prague, described the series to a Czech media outlet as similar to The Godfather: “It’s the Empire slowly building up its power base around the galaxy, what happens in Coruscant, which is the major capital, and it’s [about] a group of underground bosses who live there and control drugs, prostitution.”
McCallum suggested at the time that the show would not be financially feasible for “three or four years,” which would place a potential release around 2015 — the same time as the release of the new Star Wars film. While simultaneous film and TV releases might not be considered ideal from a brand perspective, EW suggests that the upcoming Star Wars: 1313 videogame, which reportedly draws heavily on the ideas and concepts for the potential series, could work in the show’s favor:
Sources say story materials and the designs for the TV project were used to help make the game…. This creative strip-mining could arguably help the TV show’s chances — it’s not like Hollywood has been shy about doing crossovers between videogames and films before.
While it remains to be seen whether the financial obstacles can be overcome and the TV show — or this version of it — will finally come to pass, it’s still an exciting possibility at an exciting time for Star Wars fans, as the Disney acquisition opens up new possibilities — and revives old ones — for the long-running franchise.
ABC Looking at Long-Awaited <em>Star Wars</em> Live-Action TV Show
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ABC Looking at Long-Awaited <em>Star Wars</em> Live-Action TV Show
