Star Wars TV Series (w/ 104% More Boba Fett! Confirmed!)

[TheButcher]

From The Force.net:
Live-Action Series Concept Illustrator Q&A

Our friend Tagne from the French site Starwars-Universe.com noticed that a few concept artists/illustrators were already listed on the IMDB page for the live-action series. One of the concept illustrators, Jonathan Bach, was nice enough to participate in a short Q&A.

"Could you tell us what your work exactly is?

I am a concept artist and work in many capacities with many different parties in order to bring ideas from words to images. Sometimes I'll work freely in order to provide ideas to a client who is still forming a loose picture of a project, while at other times if a project is further along I'll provide visual solutions to meet specific requirements whether that be from a director, production designer, art director, etc.

How many times did you work with Lucasfilm? What can you say about the Star Wars live-action project?
I was fortunate enough to work for Lucasfilm for about 2 years (until the end of 2009). Working on the show was an incredibly rare and exciting opportunity and I am extremely grateful to have contributed to the deep mythology that is Star Wars. The live-action series is still in development and of course as such I can not give any details. However, I will say that it is quite different than anything that has come before it in the Star Wars
universe and will certainly be worth the wait.

[TheButcher]

From SciFi Wire:
Star Wars live-action TV show due sooner than later!

From The Chicago Tribune:
'Star Wars' live-action series: Is it far, far away or getting pretty close?

[Fievel]

'Star Wars' Live-Action TV Series In A Holding Pattern, Says George Lucas

The live action TV show is kind of on hold because we have scripts, but we don't know how to do 'em. Because, they literally are Star Wars, only we're going to have to try to do them ... a tenth the cost. And, it's a huge challenge ... lot bigger than what we thought it was gonna be.

My first thought on reading this was that the overall scope of what they planned was too large for a series and that they wouldn't be able to make the money on TV that they would if released theatrically. I still wish that Lucas would drop this whole story and jump back to the Old Republic days.... but that's just me.

[ONeillSG1]

'Star Wars' Live-Action TV Series In A Holding Pattern, Says George Lucas

The live action TV show is kind of on hold because we have scripts, but we don't know how to do 'em. Because, they literally are Star Wars, only we're going to have to try to do them ... a tenth the cost. And, it's a huge challenge ... lot bigger than what we thought it was gonna be.

My first thought on reading this was that the overall scope of what they planned was too large for a series and that they wouldn't be able to make the money on TV that they would if released theatrically. I still wish that Lucas would drop this whole story and jump back to the Old Republic days.... but that's just me.

Old Republic or Post OT. Either one has so much potential for storytelling.

[RaulMonkey]

Post OT would be great, without paying any attention to Timothy Zahn's trilogy of novels ("Heir to the Empire" etc.) or any of the other books or comics. No knock against them, but I'd love for the writers to be completely free to explore their imaginations and give us fresh STAR WARS, without having to work toward future continuity. Set it a hundred years after ROTJ if you have to. Just advance the story already.

[Fievel]

Post OT would be great, without paying any attention to Timothy Zahn's trilogy of novels ("Heir to the Empire" etc.) or any of the other books or comics. No knock against them, but I'd love for the writers to be completely free to explore their imaginations and give us fresh STAR WARS, without having to work toward future continuity. Set it a hundred years after ROTJ if you have to. Just advance the story already.

There's a comic series out right now called Legacy that is set 125 years after ROTJ and features a descendant of Luke as the main character. I like it because it doesn't have so much canon/continuity to worry about, yet still features a hint of familiarity here and there, so I could dig that type of jump ahead.

[RogueScribner]

i'd love an Old Republic TV show. You get to see the Jedi and Sith in their prime, but sew the seeds for what's to come. A post-OT series could work too. But yeah, basically do anything outside of Skywalker time line please.

[Peven]

this show almost writes itself......

set in post OT...

it is a "buddy" show......

main characters are....

...the 20-something yr old daughter of Han Solo and Leia and the son of Chewbacca

don't say anything right way....let it settle in...

[TheBaxter]

the will-they-or-won't-they sexual tension would be too much to bear.

[Lord Voldemoo]

Post OT would be great, without paying any attention to Timothy Zahn's trilogy of novels ("Heir to the Empire" etc.) or any of the other books or comics. No knock against them, but I'd love for the writers to be completely free to explore their imaginations and give us fresh STAR WARS, without having to work toward future continuity. Set it a hundred years after ROTJ if you have to. Just advance the story already.

Agreed. I would expect that a post OT series would probably have pretty free reign, perhaps incorporating expanded universe elements where logical/convenient and ignoring anything that isn't, which is pretty much what Lucas did for the PT. The name "Coruscant" and its description as an all-city capital planet, for example, was originally penned by Zahn in Heir to the Empire, and it made it into the PT, but the PT conflicts with a bunch of other books in different places. I think Lucas's position has always been that the books, video games, etc., are only "canon" to the extent that he wants them to be...

[TheBaxter]

I think Lucas's position has always been that the books, video games, etc., are only "canon" to the extent that he wants them to be...

unfortunately, that's his position with the OT as well...

[TheButcher]

DEADLINE VIDEO:
George Lucas Has 50 Hours Of Scripts For 'Star Wars' Series

George Lucas gave a long-winded explanation of why the re-release of the Star Wars prequel trilogy will be important, in an interview with G4's Attack of the Show. Personally, I was underwhelmed by the prequel and am not as sparked up for a 3D conversion as I would if The Lord of the Rings were being converted. But Lucas dropped a nugget that will have Star Wars fans salivating. He said that on his planned Star Wars TV series, he's got 50 completed scripts that are ready to go, if they can just find a way to chop down the cost of shooting them. That's a lot of Star Wars, and Lucas seems determined to find a way to get them done. Here's the interview, and you might also notice that Lucas does the chat with Disney Imagineering's Tom Fitzgerald. He must be a silent partner in this operation, because Lucas doesn't even let him get a word in:

[DennisMM]

REALITY: George Lucas has 5 hours of decent scripts for TV Star Wars.

[Cpt Kirks 2pay]

REALITY: George Lucas has 5 hours of decent scripts for TV Star Wars.

Reality Part 2. They're not gonna be live action, but over CGI animation again. All that money saved on actual sets just to go on green paint and a new Mac. That's how he's really gonna make it.

[TheButcher]

From Bleeding Cool:
Star Wars TV Series Has Third-Draft Scripts, Will Shoot In Czech Republic

There’s been some misinformation and misinterpretation bouncing around of late, in respect of the Star Wars live-action TV series. I can’t have been the only one who, seeing George Lucas pop up on the BBC’s coverage of the Grand Prix today, hope that they’d grill him to set the record straight. They didn’t. They spoke to him about the weather.

The best info comes from Rick McCallum, producer of the prequels and the in-development show, in conversation with Czech Position. Recently, McCallum and Lucasfilm shot Red Tails in the Czech Republic, so the question arose about using the same resources and stages for the planned Star Wars show:

Oh, absolutely. This would be one of the primary places because of the talent…

But when? He went on:

The TV series is on hold, but that has nothing to do with the Czech Republic; it has to do with [the episodes being] so ambitious.

And McCallum also clarified the nature of this ambition:

We have 50 hours of third-draft scripts, but the problem we have is there is a lot of digital animation; we don’t have the technology yet to be able to do them at a price that is safe for television. Since we would be financing them, it would be suicide for us to do this… So we are going to wait three or four years.

Though McCallum does fear that, by then, TV may have become nothing more than a morass of reality shows. At least he says he fears that, but does anybody really believe it’s going to get so bad that drama will disappear from the networks completely?

Not that the networks seem like an ideal home for this particular show. The way McCallum pitches it, the series sounds an awful lot like a strand of The Wire, just a long time ago and in a galaxy far away:

Basically, it is like 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 a group of underground bosses who live there and control drugs, prostitution.

Star Wire it is, then. And if we want to see it, all we have to do is boycott Dancing With The Stars and its ilk for four years.

Deal.

[Cpt Kirks 2pay]

Deal.

No I don't think so.

This...

is there is a lot of digital animation

Doouuhhhh......!! (Which means I think this is shit)

And this...

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 a group of underground bosses who live there and control drugs, prostitution.

I don't want/need to see this. It's prequelitis irrelevantis unnecesarinessness.

[TheButcher]

From BAD:
Hypothetical STAR WARS TV Show Gets A Title

[Fievel]

From BAD:
Hypothetical STAR WARS TV Show Gets A Title

Best part of that article is the picture used.

[so sorry]

From BAD:
Hypothetical STAR WARS TV Show Gets A Title

Best part of that article is the picture used.

BWAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

Awesome...

[TheBaxter]

this show better have kate beckinsale in a supertight latex outfit, or else lucas will have raped my adulthood as well.

[TheButcher]

From AICN:
An Intriguing Potential STAR WARS UNDERWORLD Plot Point!?!?
SPOILER ALERT !!

[TheButcher]

ABC to Consider Live-Action STAR WARS TV Series

The sticking point for getting this show off the ground was always money. Each episode was budgeted at around $5 million, which is a lot in the world of television. Moreover, Lucasfilm wanted to retain ownership of the series, giving whichever network aired the show a smaller cut of the profit. Now that Disney owns both Lucasfilm and ABC, obviously the network is going to look into possibly making the show. ABC president Paul Lee had this to say to EW:

“We’d love to do something with Lucasfilm, we’re not sure what yet. 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.”

[TheButcher]

ABC to look at 'Star Wars' live-action TV series

ABC entertainment president Paul Lee says he’s going to take a look at the long-gestating Star Wars live-action TV series now that the Disney deal to acquire Lucasfilm is complete.

“We’d love to do something with Lucasfilm, we’re not sure what yet,” Lee exclusively told EW. “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.”

Even many working in Hollywood don’t realize a live-action Star Wars TV series has been sitting on the shelf the past few years. The project was commissioned by longtime Lucasfilm producer Rick McCallum, who enlisted writers such as Battlestar Galactica‘s Ron Moore and swore them to NDA secrecy on the plot details (more on the show’s storyline below). Fifty scripts were written. McCallum once called the scripts the most “provocative, bold and daring material that we’ve ever done.”

And then … nothing.

The scripts gathered dust, the scope of the production and the extent of the show’s necessary visual effects deemed too expensive for a broadcast or cable network. The president of one premium cable outlet told me last summer the project just didn’t make any financial sense. The closest comparison was HBO’s lavish Game of Thrones. But that deal gave HBO control of a major chunk of the Thrones empire, including DVD and international distribution which significantly offset the show’s high production cost. The Star Wars show was budgeted at more than $5 million per episode and Lucasfilm wanted to retain ownership.

But now Disney has purchased Lucasfilm for $4 billion and Disney owns more than a couple TV networks. The financials for a big-budget TV show are more compelling if the license fee and other income sources stay in the family. Already one Star Wars-related project is in the works for kids network Disney XD. Cartoon Network’s popular and innovative animated title The Clone Wars will likely shift to XD after its current deal expires. Could the live-action show finally see the light of day too? It’s a tricky question because a new Star Wars film is planned for 2015. Cautious brand managers are sometimes reluctant to have a live-action TV show on the air when producing live-action films — such as Warner Bros. putting the kibosh on any Batman TV projects while making Christopher Nolan’s trilogy.

Lee said he wasn’t sure if the project was still viable. “It’s going to be very much up to the Lucasfilm brands how they want to play it,” he said. “We got to a point here with Marvel, a very special point, where we’re in the Marvel universe, and very relevantly so, but we’re not doing The Avengers. But S.H.I.E.L.D. is part of The Avengers. So maybe something oblique is the way to [approach the Star Wars universe] rather than going straight head-on at it.”

Sources say the live-action series centers on the story of rival families struggling over the control of the seedy underside of the Star Wars universe and the people who live within the subterranean level and air shafts of the metropolis planet Coruscant (the Empire’s urban-sprawl-covered home planet). A bounty hunter may be the main character. Set between the original Star Wars film trilogy and the prequels, the time period allows for all sorts of potential appearances from classic figures from the Star Wars universe.

Extensive art work including character designs, costume designs, and set designs were all developed by a top team of concept artists and designers who worked for more than a year on the third floor design studio at George Lucas’s Skywalker Ranch’s main house on the project. The team was closely supervised by McCallum and Lucas.

If all this sounds vaguely familiar, it might be because this roughly matches the description of the upcoming Star Wars videogame 1313. In fact, sources say story materials and the designs for the TV project were used to help make the game. So if you want to see what the TV show was supposed to look like, check out art from 1313 (one example above). 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.

Can you imagine that ultra-hypothetical ABC Sunday-night lineup? Once Upon a Time, Star Wars: 1313 and S.H.I.E.L.D?