STAR WARS UNDERWORLD:

PUTTING THE PIECES TOGETHER

by led

Set in the underworld of the Star Wars universe, Star Wars Underworld explores the seedy, dark side of the galaxy and the characters who inhabit it. Particularly, it begins with a focus on the criminals in the Coruscant underworld, seen in The Clone Wars animated series. The series eventually expands outward to cover other parts of the galaxy, possibly in several spin-off series...

You can find an excellent overview of what we know

about the series on Marv / Numidian Prime’s blog here.

Please note that all information in these first two sections is a summary of my research. If you want to read the primary evidence upon which they are based, go to the “Quote Catalog.”

Confirmed Content:

Characters: Boba Fett, Saw Gerrera, Han Solo, Lando Calrissian, Chewbacca, Palpatine, Darth Vader, C-21 Highsinger, Mas Amedda, Rebel pilots

Locations: Coruscant Underworld, Level 1313, 79s Bar

Concepts:

• Major crime families and organizations are based on Coruscant during the dark times.
• Level 1313 is a dangerous area on Coruscant.
• Mas Amedda is the Grand Vizier of the Empire
• Darth Vader secretly deals with a crime syndicate in the Coruscant underworld called the Crymorah syndicate
• The Droid Gotra, a collection of repurposed battle droids that were not deactivated at the end of the war. The group is controlled by the Crymorah.
• Separatist holdouts exist and still have influence
• There is a Church of the Force, comprised of non-Force-sensitives who want to follow the religion during the dark times. They operate in the shadows of Coruscant.
• Saw Gerrera leads a small group of extreme rebels (who may or may not have been given the name the Partisans at the time of production).  
• There are multiple rebel cells in the galaxy which all group together to form the Alliance
• Palpatine’s first name is Sheev
• Palpatine is in some way wronged by a heartless female gangster. This makes Palpatine more sympathetic and “destroyed as a person.”

• (It is presumed that this would have been a flashback or recalled story of a younger Palpatine, and it also seems clear that the source of this information isn’t quite representing the material accurately, so don’t take this too literally.)

• The Empire uses police gunships to hunt criminals on Coruscant.
• Empire Day is celebrated every year on the anniversary of the Empire’s creation
• Clones are phased out of service and start aging quickly, some remain as training sergeants
• Clones go to 79’s bar to forget the horrible actions they committed in Order 66
• The Pyke Syndicate, which deals in space, is connected to major crime families on Coruscant
• Kyber crystals are used to power the Death Star

Other Details about the Series:

• Takes place between Revenge of the Sith and  A New Hope
• Would have dealt with the Rebellion’s formation
• Lando losing the Millennium Falcon to Han Solo is depicted
• Han Solo and Chewbacca’s first meeting is depicted
• Boba Fett is featured heavily alongside a crew of bounty hunters

Test Footage:

There is proof-of-concept 2010 test footage available to watch for the series. Plus a YouTube upload of it that includes behind-the-scenes footage. (The description of the video also links to this document!) The footage was eventually definitively proven real in a Vanity Fair article, which goes into the story of its creation. Please note that the footage is a tech proof-of-concept, and isn’t directly taken from any of the scripts, nor was it made by Lucas himself. It shouldn’t be read into in regards to story.

Rumored/Unconfirmed Details:

Old rumors from Ain't it Cool News:

May 20, 2004:

• The series will center on Boba Fett, between Episodes III and IV

October 16, 2007:

• Pod Races and the Podracing world are explored
• One Podracer, Thall Joben (from the Droids series) appears
• A rebel general named Durron (possibly related to Kyp Durron from the EU)
• A rebel with the surname Naberrie (likely related to Padme’s family)
• A General Papanoida, possibly the same as or a relative to Baron Papadioda from Revenge of the Sith
• Bib Fortuna and Oola would appear
• The Death Star plans are involved somehow (somewhat confirmed by John Knoll saying he pitched the R1 idea around 2005ish, though it must be stressed that he said the idea wasn’t used)

From Hayden Blackman or Dan Wasson discussing The Force Unleashed on TheForce.net:

• Characters from The Force Unleashed possibly show up in the series

Production:

Producers: George Lucas, Rick McCallum

Writers: Ronald D. Moore, Steven Scaia, Chris Chibnall, Matthew Federman, Tony McNamara, Fiona Seres, Louise Fox, Matthew Graham

Art Department Coordinator: Phil Szostak

Concept Design Supervisor: Eric Tiemens

Concept Designers: Dave Hobbins, Jonathan Bach, Ryan Church, Fabian Lacey, Kinman Chan

(Planned) Actors: Daniel Logan

Art development started in late November 2006. In these early days, it was just Lucas and two concept artists, Jonathan Bach and David Hobbins, working on the series. In February 2008, Phil Szostak was brought in as Art Department Coordinator to oversee things, as the series was ramping up production and more concept artists were being brought in. Szostak’s predecessor in that role for Episodes II and III, Fay David, trained Szostak in the role when he first came onto the project.

The department was based on the third floor of the main house of Skywalker Ranch, directly above George Lucas’ office. There was a private back staircase so he could reach them at any time. Technically, they worked for another Lucasfilm subsidiary, JAK Enterprises (named after Jet, Amanda and Katie Lucas) which also worked on the documentaries for Young Indy.

George treated the third floor as a “sketchpad.” The art was used to generate characters and locations, which would then be used in conjunction with developing story ideas, as is usually the case with a Lucasfilm production. Those working in the art department at the time included Szostak, Ryan Church, Eric Tiemens, and Dave Hobbins.

McCallum and Lucas had a long, worldwide search for writers. They met with upwards of two hundred writers from the United States, England, and Australia. They eventually assembled a team of writers, including Ronald D. Moore, Chris Chibnall, and Stephen Scaia. This group had only five or six writers as of October 2007, but seemed to eventually grow a bit larger. The scripting process began in November 2007 with the first meeting of the writing group. Early in development, John Knoll pitched an idea for a story about the rebels stealing the Death Star plans, but it was never written as it didn’t fit the time period. That pitch ended up becoming the basis for the Rogue One film.

This writing team ultimately crafted nearly fifty scripts (48 to be exact, according to some sources) for the series. Lucas’ idea was to have a large amount of material written and ready to go before even starting production, so that it could be done as economically as possible. It should be noted though that these scripts were not in finished form. Many were still early drafts, and would have gone through revisions before being filmed had the production not run into issues. Furthermore, Lucas had told the writers to write without regard for budget, as he wanted to find a way to make feature film-level stories on the small screen.

As for casting, some had begun during the development, and at the “Future of Star Wars” panel at Dragon Con 2009, it was heavily hinted that Daniel Logan would return to reprise the role of Boba Fett. Logan has since stated that he was training to be in shape for the role around this time. In 2007 Rick McCallum said that casting was planned to begin in June 2008, though by April 2009 Star Wars Insider was reporting that casting had not begun yet and that the scripts needed to be finished first. They planned to shoot in Sydney, and eventually set up a production base there.

        However, by the turn of the decade the series was running into serious issues. The scripts, as Lucas had mandated, were as big as any of the Star Wars films, and he was adamant about finding a way to produce them. As with his plans for the prequels, the technology wasn’t quite there yet. Proof-of-concept footage was shot by Stargate Studios in 2010, trying to see if the project was viable. They filmed a handful of Stormtroopers and extras on a small green screen set, compositing a virtual environment in real time. Lucasfilm liked the result, and had Skywalker Sound add in some dialogue and sound effects to what had already been shot. But regardless of Lucasfilm’s approval of the test footage, whether it was fully up to George’s envisioned standard or if it was truly replicable at a great scale was still up in the air.

By 2011, Lucas was declaring that the series sat “on the shelf.” An attempt to secure additional land in Lucas Valley, called Grady Ranch, to use as a production studio evaporated in 2012. With that, any hopes of producing the series in an economically feasible manner were gone. In June, Lucas stepped down as president of Lucasfilm and appointed Kathleen Kennedy his successor, and then in October, sold Lucasfilm to the Walt Disney Company. With that, Lucas’ involvement with the company began to wind down.

        Of course, the dozens of scripts were part of the value of the sale, and they have been mined heavily since. From Saw Gerrera’s emergence into live-action to details about the criminal underworld in publishing materials, and even extending to plans for Coruscant in an early version of Episode IX, the plans for Underworld continue to influence modern Star Wars storytelling. Kathleen Kennedy expressed her interest in continually mining these scripts and concepts in a 2015 interview, as did Dave Filoni in 2022.

With the prospect of a live-action Star Wars series finally becoming a reality in 2019 in the form of The Mandalorian, using the very virtual production methods that George had planned to use at Grady Ranch to break through the technology barrier, who knows what the future may hold for these abandoned materials. Perhaps we’ll eventually see the premise for Underworld directly brought to the screen. Perhaps we’ll just have to watch the clip of Lonni walking through the Coruscant underworld from Andor on a loop. For now, though, it’s great just to look into all the incredible work that went into the series in the first place.

Production Images

In these images, Lucas is seen working on the four acts of an episode’s story on a whiteboard with the writers. This method, and indeed even this story room, is familiar to anyone who has seen BTS clips of Lucas working on The Clone Wars (example here).

Promotional Material

This poster was shown at Toy Fair 2007 to show off Lucasfilm’s three major projects for the next three years: 30th Anniversary/The Force Unleashed, Clone Wars, and the live-action TV series.

Quote Catalog:

Keep in mind that some older embedded videos or links to Tweets may no longer work. I did my best to transcribe those things accurately when they were current, so you’ll just have to trust me there.

“Lucasfilm would like to move into TV programming after ‘Star Wars: Episode III,’ ” said Jeff Ulin, the senior director of distribution and business affairs and head of Lucasfilm’s TV activities. Ulin is a former CEO of the animation company Wild Brain.

-Jedd Ulin, Variety Report October 10, 2004 (link)

"It's not decided where or what the TV series will be," insists Daniels. "The plans are very loose on that one. Everyone is just waiting for the last film."

The actor won't be pressed on whether he'd be willing to wear the metal skin of C-3PO for a year to shoot the forthcoming TV series.

-Anthony Daniels, Starburst Magazine Interview (via TFN) December 23, 2004 (link)

“And then I’m working on a spin-off series -- it’s not with the main characters, but it’s with other characters that have appeared in the series. That’ll give you something to think about. And it’s gonna be a live action series. I think it’s a really great idea. We're probably not even gonna get started shooting for about a year. What we want to do is what we did with Young Indy, which is to do the first season of scripts all at once, and then go and shoot them. So it takes a little time because it means we have to write all the scripts and set everything up. I'm going to get it started, and hire the show runners and all of that sort of thing, but then I'm gonna step away from it and go and do other things."

-George Lucas, Celebration III (quoted by Starwars.com) April 19, 2005 (link to Star Wars dot com paraphrased quote) (link to actual audio from Blast Points)

“...and then we’re also working on a live-action series, a spin-off. Not with the main characters but with other characters from the Star Wars universe. And that will be -- trying to put that together in the next year and then we have to write a year’s worth of scripts so we can do it the way we did Young Indiana Jones.”

-George Lucas, Celebration III (audio from Blast Points) April 19, 2005 (link) (link is to podcast episode)

[Timeframe of the show and will we see any of the actors from I, II, and III in it?]

“Well, there's none of the main characters from I, II, and III... or IV, V and VI for that matter, that... Well, actually, that's not completely true now that I think about it. We haven't really started the TV show, so it's hard to answer. But is is a possibility. It does take place between Episode III and IV, so there's a lot of issues that are connected, but not very many people. I mean, you hear about people but you don’t actually see them."

-George Lucas, Celebration III (audio from Blast Points) April 19, 2005 (link) (link is to podcast episode)

[Will we ever see a movie that deals with the Knights of the Old Republic and the rise of the Sith?]

“Well, not that I know of right now. Uh, there was an issue of talking, yknow, if these TV shows work, then maybe there will be more, and if there’re more than we will go to other places like that, rather than around the actual saga.”

-George Lucas, Celebration III (audio from Reddit) April 19, 2005 (link)

“Elaborating on the television series' setting in the chronology of the saga, Lucas explained that the idea currently in development takes place between Episodes III and IV. "There's none of the main characters from I, II, and III (or IV, V and VI for that matter) in the..." he stopped in mid-sentence. "Well, actually, that's not exactly true now that I think about it. We haven't really started the TV show, so it's hard to answer. There's a lot of issues that are connected, but you won't necessarily see a lot of the people that are connected." A fan asked the chances of exploring the KOTOR-era Jedi or the origins of the Sith on TV, and Lucas stated that if the television projects are successful, he would examine the possibility of moving elsewhere in the saga.”

-Starwars.com reporting on what George Lucas said, Celebration III April 19, 2005 (link)

“        True enough, but "Star Wars" fans have been known in the past to revel in the minutiae of such insignificant background wanderers as Hammerhead ... er ... Momaw Nadon (our apologies to the Nadon family). Lucas plans to indulge such eccentrics via a TV show he hopes to begin when finished with his "Revenge" promotional duties. "The show is based on incidental characters, really minor characters in the saga part of it. None of the main characters are in it. It is live-action, and that's about all I can say at this time." ”

-George Lucas, MTV Interview May 9, 2005 (link)

“We’re doing a live-action show which involves incidental characters, very minor characters in the Star Wars saga.”

-George Lucas, Moviefone Unscripted Interview with Hayden Christensen May 2005 (link)

“I would love to be involved with the new TV series. I am keeping crossed my fingers, toes, eyes and whatever I can cross. If there is any development on that, I am sure you guys will know before me. But I will let you know if anything comes up.”

-Daniel Logan, his SW.com Blog August 7, 2005 (link)

“IGN FilmForce can exclusively report that Lucasfilm is seeking screenwriters for its planned TV series based on George Lucas' Star Wars film saga.

Keeping with Lucas' penchant for security, the show will be scripted at the bearded one's secluded Skywalker Ranch. Work will commence this January. Lucas and his colleague Rick McCallum will produce the still untitled show.

The series is slated to run 50 hours and will be a mixture of live-action and CGI. Principal photography will begin in 2007 with filming to take place in Australia.

While the show will apparently revolve around imperial bounty hunters, there could be other directions taken. The series will take place after the Empire has risen to power.”

-IGN Report September 15, 2005 (link)

"There will be a live-action show, but I don't know if it'll be in 2006," he says. "I haven't even started writing the script."

"It's all minor, minor characters [from the movies]. It's not the Skywalker story at all - that's going on in another part of the galaxy."

-George Lucas, New York Post Interview September 17, 2005 (link)

“And the live-action television series, which is something we're planning for just at the beginning of 2007, we're just starting to interview writers and trying to really figure out, you know, which direction. It is going to be much darker much grittier it's much more character based. You know he [Lucas] envisions somewhere like 100 hours between Episode III and Episode IV with a lot of characters we haven't met that have been developed in other, you know some of the novels and other things. So we're really excited about that 'cause I think finally we can have the opportunity to answer everybody's questions once and for all by the time we finish the series."

-Rick McCallum, Revenge of the Sith DVD press conference October, 2005 (Hyperspace content, so it’s now completely unavailable) (link to quote source) (link to IGN report)

“Well I think um, Nobody really knows the details of the television series, I don't think that's... the people... because people have been particularly coy I just think a lot of things haven't been decided yet, but I know George's intention is to follow one of the characters who, who's been less highlighted up to now, but has been very popular uh... with audiences. Um... and sure if it's the period between the movies the Emperor has to be referred to, but you'll remember he was referred to often, without actually appearing, in the first Star Wars movie and Peter Cushing was his very effective representative. So I suspect there might be a number of very effective representatives. Uh, but you know I always answer my telephone.”

-Ian McDiarmid, Revenge of the Sith DVD press conference October, 2005 (Hyperspace content, so it’s now completely unavailable) (link to quote source) (link to IGN report)

“Principal photography will take place all around the world, probably with a base in Sydney. We will be shooting in hi-def, or, if anything else evolves within the next 12 months, you know, that would replace hi-def. I don't see that happening, but there may be new and more, or less expensive cameras with more optical imagery or optical discs that we record on. But basically it will be hi-def, yes."

-Rick McCallum, Revenge of the Sith DVD press conference October, 2005 (Hyperspace content, so it’s now completely unavailable) (link)

Jim Ward added that the new series offers Lucasarts the opportunity to expand the gaming universe of the Star Wars series. "We're also excited at Lucasarts about that opportunity as well," Ward said. "It's a whole environment for us to go and make some great games."

-Jim Ward, Revenge of the Sith DVD press conference October, 2005 (Hyperspace content, so it’s now completely unavailable) (link)

"We're very excited - we just got confirmation George Lucas has committed himself to writing the Star Wars TV series. I guess this is the news all fans have been waiting to hear. It will all be new [characters] because the originals will all be too old. But we will be using Anthony as C-3PO because there is such a thing as loyalty."

-Rick McCallum, Daily Mirror Interview (via Ananova) March 2006 (link)

“I can’t talk to you much about the TV show.  The Star Wars TV series probably won’t be for another couple of years.  We’ve just started the basic concept.  We’re interviewing writers, and seeing a lot of people, but I would say it wouldn’t be happening for about eighteen months. Don’t believe a single thing [you’ve heard].  It happens between Episode III and Episode IV.  It will be all new characters.  It will be the missing twenty-year period during Luke growing up.  Think about bounty hunter, that’s all I can tell you.  It’s no one else that you will know.  It’s really early stages, and we haven’t sat down to decide what direction to go.”

-Rick McCallum, If Magazine Interview May 10, 2006 (link)

[on writing tie-in novels for LFL] “Lucasfilm didn't approve the idea of a Leia backstory because they want to keep that era of the SW continuity untouched for the television series they're considering.”

-Ann C. Crispin, Jedi Council Forums “Author Analysis: Ann C. Crispin” Thread May 29, 2006 (link)

“        In 2007, Lucas will begin work on a live-action "Star Wars" show set during the 18-year gap between Episodes III and IV. "We haven't started yet; I start that next year," the filmmaker said, adding that he's determined to write an entire first season before shooting begins on the show that will star "background" characters from that time period.
        "None of the Skywalker story, none of that stuff is in there," he explained, shooting down any depiction of a young Han Solo acquiring the Millennium Falcon or running with Lando Calrissian. "It's completely different. The animated series has got all the characters in it. The one that comes after, the live-action one, is with people who were in 'Star Wars,' but they're not the main characters."
        Lucas said the plot will be steered by characters such as Tie-Fighter or Rebel pilots, most only briefly glimpsed in the six "Star Wars" films.”

-George Lucas, MTV Interview “George Lucas Talks Retirement, Brand-New Film, Indy 4, Star Wars” October 6, 2006 (link)

“With the release of the final film of the Star Wars saga, everyone wanted to know what happened in between Episodes III and IV and at last, the story could be told. Or so we thought. Though portions and edges of the era have been explored in the video games (the 501st Legion's exploits in Battlefront II), comics (the fates of many of the Jedi order in Republic, Purge, and Dark Times) , a novel (Darth Vader getting used to his armor in Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader) and juvenile fiction (the continuation of Jude Watson's previous Jedi series in Last of the Jedi), and online comics, huge chunks of the 19-year-long era remain untapped. Expect many Dark Times revelations in 2007 and in the coming years with the live-action TV series.”

-Leland Chee, Starwars.com Blogs “The Current State of Continuity and Cross-Media Storytelling”  October 27, 2006 (link)

As for the forthcoming live action Star Wars television show, both [Peter] Mayhew and [Daniel] Logan would love to be involved. Logan has a meeting with Rick McCallum next week and seems eager to reprise the role. Mayhew, the sage, simply smiled and said "I think he (Chewbacca) is going to be there. He needs to be there. It's all in the lap of the gods."

-IGN, NYCC Report February 23, 2007 (link)

Some of the concepts that survived long enough to be discussed with George Lucas included a story about the early heroes of the Rebellion, a game centered on a superheroic Wookiee character, and a game featuring a gadget-wielding mercenary. George provided a ton of insightful and helpful feedback, helping the team to pick and choose features and story elements from a variety of the concepts. Some of the ideas were also tempered by George because they either didn't fit his vision for Star Wars or were in line with things he has considered for the future (perhaps dealing with the animated series, or possibly the live-action show -- you'll have to wait a little while for that information).

-StarWars.com The Force Unleashed Production Diary March 1, 2007 (link)

“Right now the live-action series is a few years away. Once we finish --I’m in the middle of two features and this animated series, and we’ll probably get a second animated series-- the TV show is, y’know, it’s one show that’s going to split up into four shows. So it’s very complicated. And each show will be about a different character. But, I’m not quite sure of the details yet.”

-George Lucas, Paley TV Festival March 5, 2007 (link with actual audio download of this) (link to paraphrased IGN report)

“I'm sure you've noticed that the Plagueis novel is not listed. It's true. The novel has been cancelled. We decided that this was not the right time to delve into Palpatine's back story and Plagueis's beginnings. You'll still see Jim Luceno around, though, as he's an author we are not willing to lose.”

-Sue Rostoni, Star Wars Blog March 27, 2007 (link)

“A TMZ spy informs us that the Star Wars camp is in Santa Monica interviewing writers for their upcoming live action Star Wars TV movies. Some of the writers already under consideration have written for "Lost" and "Heroes." The show will cover the 19-year span between "Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith" and "Star Wars: A New Hope." The new show will focus on minor characters in the Star Wars universe, so don't expect them to dwell on Luke Skywalker's terrible twos.”

-TMZ Report June 9, 2007 (link)

“We want to be able to take all this technology we’ve developed over the years and make it accessible to everybody and try to make each one of the episodes [of the live-action TV series] look like a major feature film with all the production values and visual effects that you would expect in a feature but do it for a television budget.”

-Rick McCallum, Celebration Europe August 14th, 2007 (link) (secondary source)

“We’ve met a whole bunch of writers from literally all over the world – we have Australia left, that’s the last place we’re going to meet some people – we’re hoping to get a group of six or seven writers ready sometime between September and December to make the final choice and then we’ll start doing story outlines. As I said before, it’s a much darker, much more character-based series, much more adult, and we’re hoping that it will go on for up to 400 episodes.”

-Rick McCallum, Celebration Europe August 14th, 2007 (link)

“I think if we can get [the live action Star Wars TV series] right, it’s something that can go on for years and years. One of the ideas is that we’ll have multiple series going on in about two or three year’s time.

-Rick McCallum, Celebration Europe August 14th, 2007 (link)

“We’re definitely going back to Sydney to shoot [the live action TV series] and probably June of next year we’ll start casting for it…I’ve had three conceptual artists working on it now for about seven months.”

-Rick McCallum, Celebration Europe August 14th, 2007 (link)

Star Wars Insider: How is the live-action Star Wars TV show going?

Rick McCallum: It’s been exciting because we’ve had the opportunity to meet over 200 writers. George and I had a fantastic time in England, where we met about 35 or 40 writers. We met a lot in the United States, a couple in Paris, Prague, and Budapest, and then we’re off to Australia at the end of July. We’re trying to get a group of about five or six people from around the world. I’m hopefully going to start the writers conferences later this year. It’ll take about six months to get the scripts, so by about 2009 we hope to actually be shooting.

SWI: Will you be shooting the show in Australia?

RM: Right now, that’s the plan. I think it’s going to really depend on where the most effective and cheapest place that we can make it is. Right now, for us, that place is Australia.

SWI: How ambitious is the project going to be?

RM: It’ll be darker and more mature, and very character based. The idea is to do, say, 13 to 16 over one or two years -- we haven’t quite figured that out yet as television is changing so dramatically worldwide. After the second or third year, one of the characters from the first series could move on to his own series. Then, by the fourth or fifth year, we would love to have four or five separate TV series of 13 episodes each running. That’s a pipe dream right now, of course! But as long as it’s good, and as long as people respond, and as long as we’re doing it at the level we need to do it, and people care about the characters, I think that’s totally possible.

-Rick McCallum, Star Wars Insider 96 September 4, 2007

“Yes, I'm working on that. We're just going to start writing it in about a month from now, start doing scripts for it.”

-George Lucas, TV Guide September 20, 2007 (link)

“...we'll do it just the same way that we're doing the animated series, which is we usually write a whole year first, and then we'll start shooting, and then we'll shoot the whole year and then once we've got [something to show], we'll see where we can put it. We're going to do a hundred of them, too. [It should be] easier [to place] than the animated one because it's live-action. “

-George Lucas, TV Guide September 20, 2007 (link)

“Well, Clone Wars has got all the characters in it — Yoda and Anakin and Obi Wan and the Emperor and all that — so it's basically the movie. The live-action [series] is not the movie. It's the Star Wars universe, but it's characters from the saga who were [previously] minor, and it follows their stories. It's set between III and IV, when the Empire has taken over. It's like Episode IV in that the Emperor and Darth Vader are heard about — people talk about them — but you never see them because it doesn't take place where they actually are. There are storm troopers and all that, but there are no Jedis. It's different, but I think it's very exciting because I get to explore a part of that universe that I haven't been able to explore. Once you have a saga, it's got a lot of requirements because it's about a particular [thing] — in this case, Darth Vader — and so it's his story from the time he's 10 to the time he died. You really can't go off that track because that's the story. Whereas now, I can make a left turn on 10th Street and go down there and see what's going on.”

-George Lucas, TV Guide September 20, 2007 (link)

“Well, we're doing these before we get a commitment, so we're just doing them on the faith that we're going to [sell them]. I mean, we're doing them ourselves, so we can finance them, we don't need to have a commitment of any kind. We're simply going to sell them.”

-George Lucas, TV Guide September 20, 2007 (link)

“And then the live-action is going to be a real hoot to do because conceptually, it's so much more interesting than anything I've ever done before.”

-George Lucas, TV Guide September 20, 2007 (link)

Multiple sources have confirmed to EW.com that George Lucas is coming to Los Angeles next week to meet with writers for his long-gestating live-action Star War series. According to one agent familiar with the project, Lucas' plan is to recruit several freelancers - aka "writers of real significance" - to spend a week at the Skywalker Ranch in November to come up with story ideas for the series. The agent also said that Lucas has indicated a desire to hire writers from other countries. The scribes would then disperse and write the 13 episodes that would be produced and financed by Lucas.

When Lucas first began recruiting Hollywood writers for the project as early as February 2006, according to the agent, his original intent was to produce 26 episodes before he went on the lookout for a network partner. The news put fans in the frenzy as speculation swirled that the live-action series would take place between Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith and Star Wars IV: A New Hope, though the agent believes those rumors are unfounded. Plot points for the series, as a result, remain sketchy.

-Entertainment Weekly Report October 12, 2007 (link)

“We met with hundreds of writers (over the summer of 2007). I love meeting writers, especially when they’ve been locked up on writing something for a long time. (We have) a combination of both (new and established) writers, not anybody who’s been in the business for, like, thirty years, but people who’ve had stuff made and we’ll have a junior set of writers too.”

[What do you look for in a writer for the Star Wars tv series ?]

“What we do is we see close to three hundred writers – some are busy. Once a month we go to Los Angeles, and two or three times a year to London and Sydney. You find out if you can connect. Some people have done really successful shows. It’s about who’s talented, who’s got the strength to challenge George and also, much more importantly, what’s the dynamics of the five or six people. If they can let go of their ego and work toward a specific goal. Sometimes you think “I’m sick of writing alone.’ Everyone has their ebb and flow. We’re trying to get everyone in their peak.”

[So, is it similar to the writing process that took place for Young Indy ?]

“Yes. On Young Indy we had four writers from England and two from the US. It was just a wacky groip of people, totally different outlooks on life. It’s a casting thing. And that’s down to luck.”

-Rick McCallum, Fractal Matter Interview October 14, 2007 (link)

Filmmaker George Lucas said Tuesday that he has “just begun work” on a live-action television series rooted in the “Star Wars” universe. There is a caveat, though: The proposed series doesn’t have anyone named Luke or Anakin in it, a story path that Lucas concedes is “taking chances” as far as connecting with an audience expecting the familiar mythology.

“The Skywalkers aren’t in it, and it’s about minor characters,” Lucas said in an interview. “It has nothing to do with Luke Skywalker or Darth Vader or any of those people. It’s completely different. But it’s a good idea, and it’s going to be a lot of fun to do.” Lucas joked that the series would be about “the life of robots” but wouldn’t let any details slip about the true premise.

-George Lucas, LA Times Interview October 17, 2007 (link)

Interviewer: The future of "Star Wars" is on television, through two new series ...

Rick McCallum: I still hope that one day George Lucas changes his mind, even if I do not think that it will happen. I am very excited by the possibility of transposing the Star Wars universe into a series. Today producing a film costs so much money, more than 100 million dollars, and it takes just as much to print copies, promote ... And it takes 2 years to make a film, it's too much long. We are getting too old for these co ...(laughs)! The format of the series, where we have to deliver one hour of program every 2 or 3 weeks, is a system that we want to exploit, to explore.and I love TV and we had a great experience with The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones . We are both very excited by this new perspective, so of course we manage to create something good. It will be more adult, more centered on the characters. If we do something that pleases us but also the public, we can continue like that forever, do 200, 300, 400 episodes ... It would be an extraordinary achievement for all of us to leave this young boy at the very beginning from episode 1 and follow it to the end.

I: Does the fact that you are running the new trilogy on the "turn - on" system (editing starts during shooting) will help you with the production of the series?

RM: Our challenge, especially mine as a producer, is to ensure that the series has all the qualities of a film with a budget corresponding to television. We will need everyone and all the skills. There are thousands of young people around the world working on special effects. Cinema is still the most powerful medium today. We try to flush out this talent, to make available the technology we have and that we have developed over the past fifteen years. We want to use this technology to allow screenwriters to imagine everything they want, directors to have the tools to film everything in their heads, but to do it for a cost in line with the TV economy.

I: George Lucas was recently in Los Angeles to meet writers and build his team for the series. How did it go ? Have you already hired screenwriters?

RM: Yes, we have our writers. We will even have our first meeting with them in late November. It will last a week and it should allow us to write the Bible of the series, the list of characters but also to sketch 4 or 5 scenarios. We have with us two great English writers, an Australian and two or three Americans. We are very happy with this team. We will therefore exchange a lot and reflect together and then the writers will leave each other to write their script. And I hope, by the end of February 2008, we will know if we have something special, unique in our hands.

I: How many episodes do you plan to produce at first?

RM: We want to reach the milestone of 100 episodes. This is a milestone on television. We do not know yet whether it will be broadcast on a network or on a cable channel. It will also depend on how television evolves, which is on the threshold of a real revolution. People want to watch TV whenever they want and no longer be dependent on a program. They want to download their series to watch on their digital music player or their computer. We do not yet know exactly what tomorrow's television will look like, but major changes are expected and we want to be part of it. I'm really looking forward to it because if we can do something that looks like little movies, it will be great for the audience and fans of the saga.

I: Do you already have a budget allocated for the production of this series?

RM: The average budget for a drama series in the United States is between $ 1.7 million and $ 2 million. We are in these waters. And the whole challenge lies there. It's very difficult to create vehicles, digital characters, sets ... all this technology that is used to create the universe of Star Wars. The challenge that is proposed to George and me is there: how to create all this, where to find the talent to reach our goal? We have the material means. The question is how and where to find talent to create a gigantic series at a cost that is not incompatible with the televisual economic system. This implies a lot of tobacco and alcohol! (laughs)

I: That's also why the series will be more character-centric ...

RM: Absolutely. But the series is part of the Star Wars universe so it must be impressive! It will be more focused on the characters. Anyway, it's the key to making a good series. In my opinion, the best thing at the moment in terms of writing and directing is on television. This comes from the fact that we are interested first and foremost in the characters. They are developed over the episodes. And in the end it's what the audience is looking for, to focus on characters. Whether it's film or television, he loves a story, characters and actors. And if by chance, the story you are telling echoes with what the public lives, then you have a success. It's the recipe, but it's very hard to prepare it.

I: Is it difficult to create new characters?

RM: Aside from Boba Fett, the series will focus exclusively on new characters. It takes advantage of the cataclysmic change between episodes 3 and 4, which corresponds to Luke's youth, when the Empire takes power. By comparison, see how much the world has changed in the past six years, in the United States, for example with President Bush, you can see how much the world can change under the impulse of one man. One man can change everything. I do not draw parallels between the series and the Bush administration, but I speak of the strength that can be displayed on the dark side. What is unique about Star Wars is that this story touches anyone, it can echo what everyone lives, through allegories.

-Rick McCallum, AlloCiné Interview [original in French] October 31, 2007 (link)

“- Boba Fett will certainly be in the series and Rick wants Daniel Logan for the part.

- The series will be on cable.

- He will have a contract for 100 episodes and Rick hopes it will be extend to 400, maybe with Expanded Universe characters after the first 100.

- So no EU character for "now" in the live action show. All the characters will be new ones.

-- Six screen writers have been hired and will start work in November

- McCallum hopes to have John Williams for the score but it is too early to tell

- Every episode will have it's own original score”

-Rick McCallim, Star Wars Reunion 2 [as paraphrased by TFN] November 2007 (link)

SWI: Star Wars is soon to make the move to television. If the call came from Rick McCallum, would you want to be involved?

RC: Yes! I have already emailed to ask to put my name down. If I could direct one or two episodes, I’d love to. I love that world and having been involved in it, I’d like to continue to be.

-Roger Christian, Star Wars Insider 98 January 2008

SWI: What’s new on the Star Wars live-action TV series front?

McCallum: I’ve been trying to get George to sit down and do the arc of the story since we came back from Cannes in 2005. And he has done everything to disappoint me [laughs]. He has had a lot of other things to do, like The Clone Wars animated series, and consulting for all the Lucasfilm companies, and also supervising the move of Lucasfilm to Presidio. I love to give him a hard time about it, but he has been working hard. Finally he is starting to get the arc together. We are at a point where we started up a small group of artists about a year ago with two really talented young kids, and now we have four. Erik Tiemens, who helped design Episode III and part of Episode II, joined us recently. So the artwork is really starting to flow, we have a great story idea, which I cannot talk about yet. And we have a group of six talented writers. We have two great writers from England, one from Australia, and three from the United States. Our plan had been to meet at Skywalker Ranch at the end of November for our first writers’ conference, but now that depends on the length of the writers’ strike. The first meeting will be about a week long, in order to develop the “bible” for the characters, in other words who they are and where they’re going to go, along with some of the story ideas. If we get lucky, if we get one, or two, or three storylines, the writers will go off and write their scripts. Then, hopefully by February, we will get the first scripts. At that time, we will know if we have something special and unique. We will do rewrites and keep polishing them until they’re fantastic. That’s when we will probably lock in the total arc of where the story is going to go for the first season, and by June we might have our first season done in terms of scripts. Once that happens, I will start preparing it as one big movie. By the end of 2008, or early 2009, we hope to be able to start shooting.

SWI: Are you excited by the art that you saw?

RM: Oh, yes! It’s fantastic! The great thing about TV is that we can move beyond the basic plot narrative that we’re stuck with in a big feature film, and we can be completely character-driven. Then you can do stories that you can’t ever do in feature film. If we get it right, and if it’s dark, more adult, and much more dramatic--and if fans love it--then we could go on forever! We’d love to get to 100 episodes, since that’s the golden number for all television series. The dream for us is to extend it even further than that, of course: two or three simultaneous series coming out after the first year! The first year we do one series, then the second year we do two series, then the third year we do three series. At the end of the day, if you really love the Star Wars saga, instead of six movies that last 12 or 13 hours, you will have hundreds of hours. We have this very rich period between Episode III and IV to do this--while Luke is growing up--a period of the Empire pushing its influence around the galaxy. There are lots of exciting to explore about power, the responsibility that goes with that, what an Empire does, how and Empire evolves. So in terms of the subtext, there is a lot of great stuff in there.

SWI: What can viewers expect to see?

RM: This takes place between Episodes III and IV, but with all new characters. This is about what happens to an empire. It’s a much darker, more character-based thing. It’s not as plot-driven [as the movies]. One of the challenges we have is making it look like a feature on a television budget, with all new characters, new environments, new planets, and trying to keep the storyline alive for a lot of people.

SWI: Tell us something we don’t already know about the Star Wars live-action TV series?

RM: Two words: Boba Fett! The series will be about brand new characters, a group of people that we haven’t seen yet, except Boba Fett, who will be an instrumental part of it. The series will also showcase other bounty hunters. So with all these new characters, anything can happen.

SWI: Will each episode of the TV series have its own musical score?

RM: It’s our plan for each episode to have its own original musical score, like we did for The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles TV series.

SWI: What do you make of all the internet stories by people purporting to know in detail what the live-action series is about?

RM: I love it. I’ll tell you why I love it. Nothing is worse, having had so much experience making films where people walk out and they never think of the film again, than having people ignore your work. When you have people who are obsessed, not only creating their own worlds, but creating their own stories about where they think Star Wars should go or what they think George should make, it’s absolutely fantastic. I’ll get 40, 50-page reviews of each film, after the films come out, from literally hundreds of people. Those are people who really spend weeks putting their thoughts together, writing about what they love, what they didn’t love, what didn’t make sense to them. I get just as many notes about what we should be doing. It’s kind of fantastic.

SWI: As in Episode I, do you need to push the envelope in terms of technology for the TV series?

RM: We have major challenges ahead, because it’s not only the stories that we want to get absolutely right, but we’ve got to create a new set of technologies that allows us to make the TV series look like a feature film, but on a television budget. Because it’s Star Wars, it has to have the worlds, it has to be big. That’s the biggest challenge for both George and me. What drives us are the characters. That’s the key for making successful TV. In fact, most of the best work in writing and directing is in television. That’s because you’ve met the characters you get to love them, and you spend 22 hours learning about them. I’m really looking forward to it because we can actually make this miniature film that will be fantastic not only for people who already love Star Wars, but for a broader audience.

...

SWI: Do you know who will broadcast the show?

RM: We don’t know if it will be cable or network television. It really depends on what will be happening to TV in general. It would be great to have the show ready for the fall of 2009. If we can have the scripts ready by March 2008, we’d want to start production as quickly as possible.

-Rick McCallum, Star Wars Insider 99 January 15, 2008 (likely conducted in Nov 07)

“[the series] will give us an amazing opportunity to tell more bounty-hunter-focused stories.”

-Rick McCallum, Star Wars Insider 99 January 15, 2008 (likely conducted in Nov 07)

“Dan Wasson (Project Lead - Wii Platform) mentioned during his talk that the Force Unleashed story line is now official cannon for the Star Wars universe. And that future work could involve these characters or involve these characters in side stories and other appearances within the story's time frame. And since the scripts for the Star Wars Live Action show have yet to be written, it's possible that some of the game's characters could end up making guest appearances in the TV show.”

-The Force.Net “The Force Unleashed” Pre-Review January 24, 2008 (link)

“The live action show probably won’t start until 2010. We’re working on it now, doing the scripts and everything, but it takes too long to get it up and organized, but I think this is a chance for the fans to see the animated series on the big screen. It works great on the big screen and it’s kind of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see it big.”

-George Lucas, Comingsoon.net March 17, 2008 (link)

“I mean, what I’m doing is I’m doing a film called “Red Tails” I’ve been working on for years, and then I’m working on a live action “Star Wars” TV series, and we’re in the script stage. That probably won’t come out for a couple of years, then I’m going to do my own films. I’m basically… you might say “retire” and just work on “hobby movies” after that.”

-George Lucas, Comingsoon.net March 17, 2008 (link)

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: How does it [The Clone Wars] dovetail with the live-action TV series that you’ve announced?

George Lucas: I’m just starting to work on the scripts now for the live-action TV series. We finished the first year of Clone Wars, [and] we’re in the middle of working on the second year. I’m finishing the scripts for the third year. And now I’m working on the scripts for the first year of the live-action show. [Smiles] So it’s a lot of scripts.

EW: Where is the live-action one going to fit into the overall Star Wars narrative?

GL: It’s completely separate. This one has all of the characters that everybody knows — everybody from Yoda to Anakin to Mace Windu to Obi-Wan — everybody’s there. The live-action has nobody there, because it’s after Episode III, so everybody’s dead, basically, or hiding somewhere. You hear about the Emperor, just like you do in Episode IV, but it’s mostly about a whole different world. I mean, there are a million stories in the big city — you’ve only seen one of them. [Laughs]

EW: Yeah, but I guess there is stuff that you could imagine coming in between parts III and IV — for example, we never saw a young Han Solo.

GL: No, well, this has nothing to do with those series. Some of the characters from the features find their way in there, so it’s not completely divorced. It’s as if we just went down the street and told a different story. You know, we were doing, I don’t know, 24, and now we’re going to move down the street here and do The Wire. Same thing, it’s just different people doing the same thing in the same city.

EW: With the same Emperor.

GL: Yeah.

EW: And the same rules.

GL: Yeah, all the same rules, all the same places, all the same stuff, and a lot of the same species. So it’s a familiar world, it’s just that you’re seeing a completely different side of it.

EW: Do you have a network yet?

GL: Not yet.

EW: Are you still hoping for 100 episodes?

GL: Yeah, I’m going to 100 episodes no matter what.

EW: Cast?

GL: No, we haven’t gotten there yet.

EW: Have you built any sets or done any mockups?

GL: No, what we do in our TV series is we write the entire first year and finish it as a script. Then we start getting ready to shoot it, then we start casting, and then we do it. We know where the whole first year is before we even start to work on it. I mean, I can do that because I’m financing the whole thing. So I’ve got it pegged out for 100 episodes, and I know exactly what I’m going to do and how I’m going to do it and what the risks are.

EW: How long will the episodes be?

GL: They’re an hour. It’s a regular live-action TV series — you know, Law & Order. [Laughs and waits a beat] I hope.

-George Lucas, Entertainment Weekly Interview March 18, 2008 (link)

An upcoming journey back to the "Star Wars" universe is going to reveal the "greasy, seamy underbelly of 'Star Wars.'" Confirming that the show will "involve some characters we know" along with new creations, Sansweet said the show would be "of epic scale."

As for how Lucas and company are going to approach such a massive undertaking he said "it will take advantage of everything George has learned about digital." I guess that means it will at least look a little better than that that "Star Wars Holiday Special."

Sansweet said the initial writers of the show have been selected and "they've had their first couple sessions working with George and [producer] Rick [McCallum]." So when can we expect all of this? "We'll see it in production probably sometime in 2009. Hopefully the series will be on by 2010," said Sansweet.

Steve Sansweet, MTV Interview April 20, 2008 (link)

“TotalFilm: How far down the line will Star Wars continue in these new incarnations?

Lucas: Clone Wars will probably go for at least five or six seasons which adds up to 200 episodes. Then we have the live-action series, which is going to be a little bit more experimental. It takes place over the 20 years when Luke's growing up, but it's not about the Skywalkers or any of that stuff.
        Like In Episode IV -- you hear about the Emperor, but you don't actually see him. People live in the Empire, but you don't see Storm Troopers. It's a completely different kind of idea, which is risky. But that's the only reason I'm doing it. Some people will inevitably say. "It's not what I think of as Star Wars." So who knows, it may work or it may not.

TotalFilm: Is it really a radical departure?

Lucas: I'd say so. It's kind of like Episode IV -- it's funny and there's action, but it's lot more talky. It's more of what I would call a soap opera with a bunch of personal dramas in it. It's not really based on action-adventure films from the '30s -- it's actually more based on film noir movies from the '40's!

TotalFilm: Any casting news?

Lucas: No, that won't be for a while. We've got writers who are currently working on scripts with the art department. First you've got to create the characters, because half of them are human and half of them aren't.
        That's the thing about Star Wars -- there's always two and half years of design work before the production stars. Nobody spends that long in television; people have a tendency to just put t-shirts on actors and call them spacesuits! Or they just use motorcycle helmets and paint them green or something. So we've been working on this for about a year now: designing sets, environments, vehicles and aliens...”

-George Lucas, Total Film Magazine May 2008 (link) (via transcript of interview from Milleniumfalcon.com)

“Lucas confirmed last week at his Big Rock ranch outside San Francisco, the site of his new animation studio, that his live action TV series is going ahead. "We're in the process of writing screenplays right now," he said.

Although the series is unlikely to go into production until 2009-10, the Australian screen production industry can't wait, given Star Wars III helped propel the country to a record level of film drama production of $449million in 2003-04. Up to 700 people in NSW were employed for the first film and 300 for the second. A long-running TV series has the added attraction of employing cast and crew for longer periods.

...

Lucas and McCallum have hired three Australian screenwriters to work on what is believed to be the first 22 episodes of a Clone Wars live-action TV series.

And in a daring creative move, Lucas has moved out of his comfort zone by hiring three Sydneysiders not known for science fiction writing: Tony McNamara, Fiona Seres and Louise Fox. The three have distinguished records in adult dramas, most particularly as co-writers on the acclaimed drama series, Love My Way.”

-The Australian “Saga's far, far from over” article August 13, 2008 (link)

[Lucas on what the population of the Star Wars universe do for fun:]

“They like pod races, they like gambling, card games. They go out and shoot at womprats in the canyons with their local tractors. (Filoni - They play that chess-style game that Chewbacca and R2 played. That's a big one.) There is an entertainment industry. But you won't find that out until you get to the live-action show in a few years. I mean, there is an entertainment...they go to the opera.”

-George Lucas, Ugo.com Interview August 2008 (link)

[Lucas on the mythology that we'll see in both the animated and live-action series:]

Well, the mythological arc of the saga doesn't really continue into these other things, because that is a story. It has a beginning, a middle and an end. It's the story of one man's struggle against evil and redemption by his son and that sort of thing. This is more like, I don't know, it's more episodic. It's more like Indiana Jones actually. You have themes and things. You still go through it. And you still have issues like that, but it's not what it's based on. This is bigger. And we get to go more places. The fun part about animation, especially in The Clone Wars in particular, is that we're allowed to go and do stories about, you know, clones. We get to know them, and find out what they do for recreation, you know, and what Jabba the Hutt's family is all about. To do all kinds of things that don't have anything to do with the main character. The film itself, the series itself, the epic itself is basically about one man. So it's very, very narrow. And you pass through a lot of things. And you look and say, what's that over there? But you never get to look at it. So this allows us to go look at all that stuff, which means we're not encumbered by this mythological uber-story of the psychological underpinnings of why somebody turns to be a bad person.

-George Lucas, Ugo.com Interview August 2008 (link)

“And we still have a challenge. Everyone wants to go to what they know, and to change, which is really hard. And to start from scratch with new technologies...we're trying to do the same thing with live-action. You know, I'm trying to do a live-action TV show...this [TCW movie] was a test for that. If we can do something that will stand up to a feature, and we did...much better than we thought it would happen. Now I'm trying to take Star Wars, which is a fifty million dollars an hour adventure, and do it for like two million dollars an hour. Now that's a trick. That's a hard thing to do and have it look the same.”

-George Lucas, Ugo.com Interview August 2008 (link)

“Jason Swank: You mentioned that we’re probably further away [from the live-action series] than you were in relation to the prequels with the first edition [of the Star Wars Encyclopedia]”

Steve Sansweet: The first edition came out in 1998 and the first prequel came out in 1999.

Jason: Right, of course. How far away are we Steve?

Steve: Well, probably about three, four years... Always in motion is the future. I mean, it could change. It’s all according to what-- y’know they’re in advanced preproduction, I mean, we’ve said that. Y’know they’re working on ideas. But a lot has to do with what’s on George’s plate and what he wants to do next and how things develop in animation. But, y’know, that’s about the best timeframe that we can give you now.”

-Steve Sansweet, The ForceCast December 18, 2008 (link)

Despite rumors to the contrary, casting of the eagerly anticipated Star Wars live action TV show is still at the earliest possible stages, with casting beginning in earnest once scripts have been written. Entertainment Weekly confirmed with a Lucasfilm representative that a casting agent in Australia is “doing some preliminary groundwork, but official casting will not start until scripts are complete,” adding that the TV series would not go into production until 2010 at the earliest.

-Star Wars Insider 109 April 2009

"It's one of those things that people sort of take for granted - you worked on the first one, so ... we're in discussion at the moment because I'm interested in playing a couple of roles... You find with those sort of roles you can play different characters - some are heavily made up, others aren't."

-Jay Laga’ia, Stuff April 10, 2009 (link)

SWI: Do you have any news as to whether you are going to be featured in the upcoming Star Wars television series?

WD: There is no news on that yet, but I have been dropping hints all over the place! I think it would be nice to the Star Wars fans if they could involve some people from the original movies. Not as Wicket, I would not hope to come back as somewhere I have already played, but maybe as a bad guy.

-Warwick Davis, Star Wars Insider 110 May 2009

[Asked if the quality of The Clone Wars series means the live-action series isn’t needed]

“I don’t think one has anything to do with another. The plans are well underway for the live-action series, George is very excited about it. It’s a matter of when the actual pre-production starts but lots of work has already taken place on the series, everything is well mapped-out. And so, it’s still a matter of picking where they’re going to film it and building up that production team. And that’s a job for Rick McCallum who did it so well with all of the prequel movies. And so it’s just a matter of time, I mean we’re looking at... y’know, probably 2012 or 2013, but it’s definitely going ahead. And people who know what it’s all about -- which is, I must say, very few people and not including me -- say they love it.”

-Steve Sansweet, Fictional Frontiers Podcast Interview November 18, 2009 (link)

Correspondence dated May 16, 2007:

“The other day  (I didn't tell you this), my agent got a call from George Lucas' people. Apparently, Lucas is in London and he wants to meet me about writing for his new Star Wars TV series! But I said no. Well, I can't go to London, I haven't the time, and Lucas didn't exactly  beat a path to Cardiff, so he can't be that interested. Mind you, they really want a UK writer, apparently. When I find out who it is, I won't be so snooty; I'll just be jealous.”

[Later the book gives a description of the series as it was currently known in 2010:]

“Star Wars (set to debut in 2012) -US science-fiction series, yet to be given an official title, focusing on characters from the galaxy of the Star Wars movies”

-Russel T. Davies, “Doctor Who: The Writer’s Tale - The Final Chapter” January 14, 2010

“        io9: You also mentioned a Boba Fett novel that you're not going to do now. That's a separate book from the final Imperial Commando book, right? You mentioned that was also cancelled because of canon clashes with the upcoming TV series — does that mean Clone Wars, or the new live-action show?
        KT: Yes, the Boba Fett book was totally separate, nothing to do with Imperial Commando. The cancellation was due to the live action show, but that's all I know.”

-Karen Traviss, io9 article “Is It Too Late to Save the Imperial Commandos?” February 12, 2010 (link)

“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.”

-George Lucas, The Empire Strikes Back 30th Anniversary Screening May 8, 2010 (link) (reported on by Rebelscum.com on May 10)

“Well right now we don’t know. We have a movie of the week and fifty hours, written, all done, ready to go. It’s just that we can’t find a way of doing it for less than fifty million dollars an episode. And obviously we can’t afford to do that. So I’m not gonna 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.

[Asked if we’ll eventually see it] Yeah, I think it’ll advance just like everything else advances. The price for everything is going down. We’re shooting it with much more sophisticated cameras. And we’re working on ways-- more inexpensive ways of doing all the special effects and that sort of thing.”

-George Lucas, IGN “Lucas Gives Update About Live-Action Series” Video Interview September 21, 2010 (link)

“It sits on the shelf. We have 50 hours and we’re just waiting to figure out a different way of making movies, a different technology that we can use that will make it so it is economically feasible to shoot the show. Right now it looks like the Star Wars features, but we have to figure out a way of making it for about a tenth the cost of the features, because it’s television. And we’re working toward that and we’re continuing to work toward that and we will get there at some point. But it’s just a very, very difficult process and obviously when we do sort of figure this problem out, it will dramatically affect a lot of movies, because a lot of features now that are costing $150-$200 million, we’ll suddenly be able to make them for $50-$60 million.”

-George Lucas, G4 TV’s “Attack of the Show” May 23-24, 2011 (link 1) (link 2) (original G4 videos gone, link is to reports via io9 and AICN)

“...we decided to check with Lucasfilm directly, to find out for sure. And a Lucasfilm PR rep confirmed that Lucas was only talking about 50 hours' worth of scripts that had been written. Nothing has been filmed yet.”

-io9, “No, George Lucas does not have 50 hours of a live-action Star Wars TV show in the can” article May 27, 2011 (link)

When asked if the Czech capital was in the running for the new series, McCallum said: “Oh, absolutely. This would be one of the primary places because of the talent.”

“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. 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 [now]. So we are going to wait three or four years.”

“Network television and cable television as we know it are completely imploding, so we’re not really sure that in five years’ time we can release a dramatic one-hour episode because it is all reality TV now.”

It takes place between episodes three and four, when Luke Skywalker was growing up as a teenager, but it has nothing to do with Luke,” he said, adding that there is no young Luke Skywalker in any of the episodes.

“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 [about] a group of underground bosses who live there and control drugs, prostitution,”

-Rick McCallum, Czech Position Interview June 10, 2011 (link)

[Asked about a blurb on advance reader copies declaring that Darth Plagueis conformed to George’s canon and was “developed hand-in-glove with the highest authorities at Lucasfilm to ensure no contradictions of George Lucas’ vision of his creations” and if Luceno met with George]

“No, I actually, when this project first was proposed, and we’re going back several years now, I did have direct input from George. I wrote him an email asking was there any reason why Plagueis couldn’t be nonhuman. And he responded that Plagueis should be a Muun, and sent me some artwork and a few other things, just a few tidbits about who he thought Plagueis would be.

And over the years, I mean, when they say canon, I think what they’re referring to there is I worked very closely with a man named Howard Roffman who is George’s sort of right-hand guy at Lucasfilm. And so while my dealings weren’t directly with George, many of the things that Howard and I discussed, Howard probably, I’m assuming, Howard discussed with George. I mean it was really a matter of my writing and saying can I do this, can I do that, and then hearing back from Howard, no you can’t, or yes let’s follow up on this. So in that sense I kind of bypassed the usual editorial format where I would be dealing with Shelly [Shapiro] at Del Rey and Sue Rostoni at Lucasfilm, and was dealing directly with Howard, Shelly and Sue weren’t even involved in the process in beginning, although they were after I submitted a manuscript.

[Asked about why the book was canceled in 2007 and then announced to be back on in 2010]

“Well, what happened -- I hope this answer doesn’t go on too long -- what happened was originally, the pitch was for me to write the story of Plagueis. And so I had some initial meetings with Howard, and we discussed who Plagueis was, and, again, what I could do and what I couldn’t do. And I came back with a lot of information back to Innapolis and sat down and wrote out a 50 page outline, and when I submitted that outline, the feedback I got was that the better story was Palpatine. That while Plagueis was an interesting character, if there was gonna be a book of this material, I was really gonna have to bring Palpatine forward. And I was really really happy with that idea, because I thought Palpatine was gonna be off limits.

But at that point, everybody wanted to take a step back, and wait and see what George was gonna do with The Clone Wars animation series and a few other projects that he was working on. After I finished [the 2008 novel] Millennium Falcon for Del Rey, I wrote to Howard and I asked him if he would be willing to revisit the idea of the Plagueis novel. And he said he would. So I went out to California and I sat down and had some meetings with him again. And we discussed the material that was in the outline, and where he thought I went wrong, where he thought I should head, which direction might be a better place to go. And over the next couple of months and with many revisions to my outline, eventually we reached an agreement on what the book should do, and then I had a go to actually write this book and include a lot more material about Palpatine. So I carried over some of what I initially had developed for the Plagueis novel, and I left a lot out of it in this version and had to think more about Palpatine and had to think more about the relationship between Palpatine and Plagueis.  ....

[On what besides the Muun species he got input on, if the LFL higher ups pushed him in any direction for the actual story]

“They weren’t pushing me at all, Basically, what we really talked about was the character of Plagueis, and we talked about Palpatine as a character. As far as plot and all the rest of it, I was on my own. There were a few things I came up with along the way that were rejected, but for the better when I look back on it. But yeah I was really left on my own in terms of structuring the story.” ...

[Interviewer expresses surprise that Plagueis was alive during the events of Episode I]

“Well that was the big thing. When we first had the meetings, I basically said to Howard and I asked him to carry this to George, I said look, there’s no suspense here because we know how Plagueis meets his end, he dies in his sleep. So I have to have something to work with, would you guys be okay with the idea of Plagueis [being alive during Episode I]? And when they said yes, that just gave me so much to work with.”

-James Luceno, Jedi Journals Interview December 21, 2011 (link)

“IGN: The Star Wars show-- the scripts are gonna be old-- if you ever make them the scripts are gonna be years old. Are they timeless or?

RM: They’re timeliness because they take place between Episode III  and Episode IV, that twenty year period when Luke is growing up. It’s not about Luke, but it's about that period of when, y’know, the Empire is really try to take things--it’s called Underworld. So, it’s the worlds--

IGN: It’s called Underworld?

RM: Well, that’s a working title. But basically, it’s underneath what’s going on. It is the criminal and the guys, um, the gangs who are running... y’know, like Wall Street, basically running the United States. Exactly.

IGN: Bernie Madoff?

RM: Exactly, exactly.

IGN: Ok, so you’re not wor-- [sounds like he’s gonna say worried]

RM: No, no.

IGN: Being as cost effective as you guys are in your process, the scripts are done...

RM: Yeah, there’s no way. I mean, they’ll only get better, the scripts. But no, it’s really a budget thing. How do we get it down to a cost that is commensurate with the reality-- cuz, uh, you know--even... most people don’t realize but the prequels only cost one hundred million dollars each. In the world of Hollywood that is nothing. And that’s why we were so able to do something for two thirds less than what the other studios would do it for and why we’re successful. But this is really tough because we’re trying to do in one hour the same amount of effects and technology that a two hour film has to do. We have to do it every week. That’s tough. And try to do it for five million dollars. But we’ll get there.

IGN: I hope so.

RM: I mean, I hope I live long enough. [vid transitions to later point] For us, because the normal person would just go to HBO, or HBO would say okay we’ll give you eight million dollars, we own the world rights and you have to cast this person, and... and that isn’t the way we want to work and that's the last thing George wants to do. So we have to find a way to figure out how to break even. It’s never been about making a shitload of money it's about how do we break even. But also you can't do that until you get a clear idea of the direction because it's totally unreal. The Nielsen ratings are completely--it’s a complete falsehood. Y’know, it’s the Bernie Madoff of how you think. It’s all a pyramid scheme because they can’t let it go, because if you do then all advertising will disappear. So you have to--everybody’s holding each other up, y’know, with the phony numbers. Whereas I truly believe in the next three, four years you can put something on television whether it’s cable or whatever and it can be disseminated where, y’know, fifty million people could see it in one night. But how do you monetize that? How do you get that back to the people who made the movie?

IGN: [another transition] So, it’s on hold now.

RM: Well, the reason that’s on hold-- we have fifty of the most unbelievable scripts. I mean, they’re really-- each one hour episode is bigger than any of the prequels were, I mean, and they just huge. I mean complex, they’re dark, they’re adult, they’re fantastic. But right now, technology--there’s just no way we could do them for the kind of five million dollar mark which would be the maximum you could do.

IGN: Five million an episode?

RM: Five million an episode. And that is because there’s so much digital animation with-- because we have so many digital characters. So, I think the idea is we’ll just hold off, y’know, we’ll wait. See if there’s any major breakthroughs in the next year or two, and just see what’s gonna happen. And then once we can come up with either a virtual set software that works really good, allows us to travel all over the world, to do stuff with... then I think we’ll come back and revisit it. If we’re still alive.

IGN: But what we were saying about you guys being able to choose your own release date for Red Tails, are you able to also with your TV projects, like maybe the live action show, choose your delivery platform?

RM: No, cuz that’s one of the other big issues. Not just the cost of the thing but also... the whole business is imploding. So the difference between where cable was two years ago and where it is now... where network television is based on complete smoke and mirrors, no one knows how to accurately judge or gauge who’s watching what... And then, if you make a network TV show, instead of an hour it’s 42 minutes, you have twenty minutes of advertising. If you aren’t so big-- if you're not 15-20 million a week, there’s no patience by the networks. So, we go ahead and make the sacrifice to make the movie, finance it and everything else, and we find ourselves on a network TV deal, after three weeks, we’re gone. [He goes on a tangent and gets distracted by someone, starts talking about cable] ... It took Mad Men over two years to get over a million people to see an episode. At one level, if we’re talking about our cost, that’s just not commensurate with anything we can do. [Talks about HBO wanting more control, the possibility of streaming and Apple TV] So that’s been part of the problem. Cost has been the major one, then network versus cable, then what outlet and how many people do you get to see it... and the DVD market’s gone. [Talks about how expensive movie tickets are]

IGN: So the Netflix model isn’t viable for you guys either.

RM: Not really, because again it still doesn’t have enough profit participation for us immediately to be able to recoup. But there is a form out there, it's just still condensing.”

-IGN and Rick McCallum, Rick McCallum Video Interview January 9, 2012 (link)

“EW followed up with McCallum at the Red Tails premiere after-party last night at New York City’s Gotham Hall. “No, it’s not the final title,” McCallum said of Star Wars: Underworld. “It’s just a working title.” A working title that may actually be quite revealing. The series has long been thought to focus on either peripheral characters from the movies or new characters outright — with nary a Jedi in sight — during the 19-year span between Episode III and Episode IV, the period during which the Empire was still consolidating its grip on that Galaxy Far, Far Away. “Underworld” suggests that the series will focus on the galaxy’s sordid demimonde. “Absolutely,” McCallum confirms. “Expect a lot of smugglers, gangsters, bounty hunters, and a few Wall Street-type power brokers. Nothing about Luke or the Skywalker saga.”
        The initial appeal of the series was that it would fill in a relatively blank part of Star Wars history. But in the years since Episode III, a number of comics, novels, and videogames (all considered canon, since they’re officially licensed by Lucasfilm) have begun to shed new light on that period, possibly presenting some continuity constraints for a series. In fact, a number of behind-the-scenes moves over the past few years have fueled speculation: George Lucas himself ordered that popular Jedi rogue Quinlan Vos survive the Star Wars: Republic comics series; A.C. Crispin’s proposed young Princess Leia novel series was canceled, as was a Boba Fett novel to be penned by Mandalorian obsessive Karen Traviss. Could this mean that Vos, Leia, and Fett could be involved in a TV series?
        Obviously, McCallum isn’t saying. But the fact that over 50 scripts have been penned “by writers hailing from Europe, Australia, and North America,” according to McCallum, suggests that the show could be envisioned as an anthology series, sort of like a television analogue to the Tales of the Mos Eisley Cantina short-story project in the ’90s, with many already-established aspects of the Expanded Universe included.
        Unfortunately, we’ll have to wait for a long time indeed, to find out. When I asked McCallum if the show is still three or four years off, he said, “Even longer. Because I think we don’t have the technology yet to be able to do it for the level of money that it would have to be done. Plus, the world of television is imploding. No one knows whether you should make a network show or a cable show. I’m really excited about it though, and I hope George does do it. I really do.”

-Entertainment Weekly and Rick McCallum, “'Star Wars' TV series: What's going on?” article January 11, 2012 (link)

Collider: I definitely wanna ask you a little bit about the live-action show. You mentioned yesterday that the idea is to get down to $5 million per episode, and I know you guys must be working on the budget now. How close have you guys been able to bring the budget down, or are you still so far apart that it just can’t happen yet?

McCallum: It’s so far apart, this is the best way to put it into perspective: we did Episode III—which is one of the larger of all the Star Wars films in relation to set construction, visual effects, the amount of visual effects and everything else—and that was made for $100 million which was unheard of even five years ago, because had it been made by any studio or anywhere in the United States it would have been easily double that price. So imagine an hour’s episode with more digital animation and more visual effects and more complicated in terms of set design and costume design than a two- hour movie that takes us three years to make, and we have to do that every week and we only have $5 million to do it. That’s our challenge. It’s not a challenge that I think can be dealt with in the next year or two years, I think it’s gonna be a little bit more longer term goal.

He’s come up with so many extraordinary digital characters that are onscreen for 30-40 minutes, well most people who love movies and kind of understand the process realize that if you do a character like Gollum or Jar Jar or any major digital character, that costs twice as much as having Tom Cruise in a movie. You get 150 people working for two years on a 40 minute performance and they all make serious money, you just add it up; that’s gonna be a serious $20-30 million character. That’s our problem, how do we get that down? How do we push everybody to get to another level?

Also, digital 3D matte paintings, how do we cut the time from 2-3 weeks to 2-3 days? On a television budget, on television screens it doesn’t have to be film res, but each one of these are major challenges for us. How do we get virtual set software? Because we can’t build any of this stuff. I mean we could do it if we did it in a traditional format where we have one set with all the characters, but George doesn’t work that way. We have 40-50 set pieces per hour, every minute and a half to two minutes there’s another set. Well we can’t build that and do that every week, that’s virtually impossible, so we have to come up with virtual set software and an environment that allows us to be able to do that on blue and green screen and be able to turn those backgrounds around really, really fast. We’re getting there, but it’s not perfect yet and it’s still too expensive.

One of the great things about Red Tails is we’ve met a whole other group of people around the world who’ve never had the resources or the tools or the access to the kind of gear that American visual effects companies have and they’ve had to cope and survive, and so we’re learning a lot from them also.

We’ll get there, I’m just not sure if it’s gonna be in the next couple of years.

Collider: What excites you most about the TV series? Also, a lot of fans are clamoring for something that’s a little more adult, a little grittier; as you said, the underworld of Star Wars. Is it darker than the movies or is it like the movies?

McCallum: No, no. It’s much darker. It’s a much more adult series. I think, thematically, in terms of characters and what they go through, it will be…if we can ever get it together and George really wants to pursue it, it’ll be the most awesome part of the whole franchise, personally.

Collider: Believe me, this is something I’ve been wanting to have happen for a very long time. I’m hoping that this all comes together.

McCallum: It’s Empire on steroids.

Collider: That’s what I want to hear! Did you see season one of Game of Thrones?

McCallum: Oh, yeah. Absolutely.

Collider: Obviously, I loved it, just like anyone else who’s watched it. I haven’t met anyone who didn’t like it. I don’t want to spoil it for anybody, but let’s just say a lot of stuff happens that’s not typical of a TV series. Is that something that you guys are thinking about doing, the way the arcs of characters were in that?

McCallum: Absolutely. Seriously, there were no holds barred, the writers went for it, George [R.R. Martin] set a standard. The original thing was, we kind of described it as “Deadwood in space.” That’s the kind of track we started heading for. Obviously, we changed it for where we couldn’t go in terms of language. It was to be serious performances, very complicated relationships, unbelievable issues of power and corruption, greed, vanity, pride, ego manifesting itself at levels that only equal the world that we live in now, but, as I said, on steroids.

Collider: By the way, I appreciate you answering my questions. You guys mentioned that you did 50 scripts. When you wrote that, did you write it in such a way that each season was 13 episodes or 22 or 24?

McCallum: One of the reasons HBO succeeds so well is that two things happen: they’re not 40-minute episodes, they’re 50-minute episodes so you actually get the serious character arc. You really have the time to be able to express yourself and let characters be real. And second of all, when you’re dealing at that kind of level like Game of Thrones, you’re doing it at 13 because that’s all you can do to make it really, really work well. When you’re stuck, when you’re forced into a 26 or 22 or 24, whatever the network bullshit is now, it’s very, very hard to keep that kind of level of quality, especially when you’re dealing with visual effects and fantasy. If you’re doing a courtroom drama, yeah, you can go for it, but not with this kind of stuff. Not if you want to be unique, bold, daring, provocative and extraordinarily original. It’s just too hard. It’s too much pressure on the cast, directors, everybody. Thirteen is good because you’re still doing, what we always try and do, like the networks force these guys to do this thing between eight and ten days, we need 15, 17, 18 days because we’ve got so many visual effects. You’re still shooting for 30 weeks a year and you need to let people breathe, have their time off, be with their families because this is total commitment. This is 16, 17 hours a day by the time you leave and get home. This is a really major, major deal for a lot of people. It’s like a Young Indy for us. Our goal was, how can we travel all around the world, make something that looks cinematic for the same price as Law and Order…not Law and Order, I can’t remember what the series was, but do it on a television budget where they shoot around the world, use major film directors, but do them for the same money that a typical cop show costs.

Collider: Does that mean that when you guys were writing, you were thinking 10, 13 episodes for a season?

McCallum: One of the problems that we have and one of the areas that we got to, for me personally, I know George was very fascinated about network television because the audience reach is so much different but then it became clear to us about two or three years ago after the financial crisis that literally the world of television is imploding, because it’s all based on smoke and mirrors. No one knows how to really judge who’s watching what or how many, but nobody can give up the Nielsen’s because without it, networks are going to fold completely, the advertisers will pull out. Everybody’s been living on this idea that they think they know what people are watching in the United States and I don’t think they have a clue. It’s like Mad Men. It was only last year that over a million people would see Mad Men and yet look at the profound impact it’s had on everything in television. Deadwood I don’t think ever got beyond four million viewers.

...

Collider: What other TV things are you possibly working for LucasFilm? What other stuff is coming together?

McCallum: Nothing right now because George is contemplating the idea of taking a little bit of time off right now. He’s got Clone Wars which he’s still doing, he’s got another season or two seasons of Clone Wars and he’s also working on an animated film which has nothing to do with Star Wars. So, he’s got his plate kind of full, but he’s going to take a little break after Red Tails and figure out what it is. I’m hoping that he will actually get back and start to do the more experimental, small, low-budget films that really is what he started off as. Star Wars was a curse and a blessing; a total blessing for him, but a curse to a lot of us who know him as a smaller filmmaker. I’m hoping he gets the opportunity to actually go back and do much more experimental work in the vein of not just THX, but pushing imagery, sound, music and telling different kinds of stories altogether. So, we’ll just wait and see.

...

Red Tails is the last of all the films that [George] ever said [he wanted to make]. He started 23 years ago on Red Tails and now he has fulfilled everything he set out to do, which no…very few filmmakers ever get an opportunity to do. He’s done everything that he actually wanted and planned to do, including More American Graffiti, including the revised version of [THX]. He got to be able to do everything that he actually wanted to do. Now, with this completed, a little bit of rest, now I think he can set upon the next chapter of his life and figure out, “Okay, do I have a new set of films, a new kind of films that I want to do?” And that’s what we hope and wait anxiously to hear from him on.        ”

-Rick McCallum, Collider Interview January 18, 2012 (link)

After several public meetings on the merits of its proposed digital studio in Lucas Valley, Skywalkers Properties LTD. decided to withdraw its application for the project.

"The level of bitterness and anger expressed by the homeowners in Lucas Valley has convinced us that, even if we were to spend more time and acquire the necessary approvals, we would not be able to maintain a constructive relationship with our neighbors," the company stated in a press release Tuesday.

According to Skywalker Properties, several movie projects they planned to shoot on sound stages at Grady Ranch are already in production and they can't wait for an approval.

"We have several opportunities to build the production stages in communities that see us as a creative asset, not as an evil empire, and if we are to stay on schedule we must act on those opportunities," the statement said.

Grady Ranch is one of three properties owned by filmmaker Geroge Lucas. The Skywalker and Big Rock ranches are located nearby the proposed Grady Ranch land. As the company grew, LucasFilm relocated the majority of their employees from Marin to San Francisco's Presidio due to the belief that Marin would not support the size of their facilities in a residential area.

The company managed to build Skywalker Ranch after a one year master plan approval and another year for the precise  development plan approval, but it took over 10 years for the county to approve the master plans for Big Rock and Grady ranches.

-Patch.com, “LucasFilm Pulls the Plug on Movie Studio Grady Ranch” article April 10, 2012 (link)

IGN: Where are you at with that TV series?

McCallum: We’re at a complicated impasse right now. We have fifty hours, fifty scripts--unbelievable. The most provocative, the most bold and daring material that we’ve ever done. The trouble is they’re so complicated, each hour has more visual effects and digital animation than any of the films that we’re done. And right now we’re just struggling to let -- there’s a massive shift in the television industry, cable and network and everything else. And we have to just figure out a way, find the way, which George is desperately trying to invest in, to be able to do these at maybe the cost of four or five million dollars an episode. That’s our biggest challenge, that’s our biggest problem. They’re so big, they’re so complicated, and we just don’t have the technology now to do that. But, y’know, wait a couple of years, he will find a way and once that happens I’m sure he’ll start back on them.

IGN: You let slip to my colleague that the working title was Underworld. Is that still the case?

McCallum: Well, what I said to him was that it takes places underneath the world, in a planet. So I guess technically he’s right, he could say that. That’s not the working title, that’s just uh... y’know that was an idea. These are the guys, they’re in Coruscant, and it’s underneath the planet that the story’s taking place. Yeah I mean it’s fantastic. It’s a fascinating look on all the characters that exist between Episode III and Episode IV. During that 20-year period when Luke is growing up, which Luke is not a part of. So hopefully one day we’ll be able to find a way to actually make it. But right now, seriously, each episode is so big that to have two of them, which would be the equivalent of a film, we just couldn’t possibly afford to do right now.

...

IGN: You guys registered this 1313 domain a while back. What is that all about?

McCallum: [pretends to get up and leave interview]

-Rick McCallum, IGN Interview May 20, 2012 (link)

“I think 1313 is showing that [an understanding of Star Wars]. We have some great guys down there making that game and they seem to have a very good handle on that game and on that universe. And I talk to them about it and I talk to them about what George has told me about certain things about the underworld. So we try to keep it all cohesive and together.”

-Dave Filoni, The ForceCast August 31, 2012 (link)

“        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.        ”

-”ABC to look at 'Star Wars' live-action TV series” Article, Entertainment Weekly, January 10, 2013 (link)

“Profiting from the poor decisions made by a galaxy facing difficult times, the Pykes have positioned themselves into power as the preeminent spice dealers in the galaxy. During the Clone Wars, they were able to keep a steady supply of the illicit substances funneling into the stores of some of the most influential crime families operating in the lower levels of Coruscant. From their well-guarded stronghold on Oba Diah, the Pykes oversaw the distribution of fresh narcotic spice harvested by slaves and other unfortunates toiling for the pampered barons living in comfort on the unspoiled side of Kessel. The Pykes relied on smugglers and unscrupulous freighter captains to pull off foolhardy Kessel Runs to deliver their prize to customers eager to pay top credit for the destructive, addictive substance.” [likely info from LAS development]

-”The Pykes” Encyclopedia Entry, Starwars.com circa January 2013 (archive link)

“The Pykes are really interesting. They really came to light... uh, something from George, that he had been developing.”

-Dave Filoni, “Shadows of the Sith” featurette on Starwars.com circa January 2013 (link)

“This episode marks the first appearance of a Republic police gunship, a vehicle design inherited by The Clone Wars team from another project.” [3/8/18 confirmed as Underworld by PH]

-”To Catch a Jedi” Trivia Gallery on Starwars.com February 2013 (link)

“The underworld is an idea that George, I think, kind of started to develop post-Revenge of the Sith. He was very interested in the layers that make up Coruscant. I think he really loved the city planet and he wanted to see more development of it. So, in Season 2 we see Ahsoka and Plo Koon go down there to track down Boba Fett. And the time after that [referring to its appearance in S5] there had been a lot more development of that area and a lot more clarity as far as what did it look like-- Some of you have probably seen the game trailers for 1313. We really worked quite collaboratively with the guys from 1313 with what we were doing because everybody was kind of zeroing in on how does this level work, how big is it, do ships fly in and out of there and just what are the logistics behind it. So, there’s so much more detail in the world now down there. The police force that you see in this as opposed to the droids that we had last time are something very much that George invented that he wanted to see in the show. The subway system was a big deal to him--to want to include this train. So all of that kind of gave us a greater sense of the scale and the dimension that the world of 1313 and this kind of criminal underworld has. “

-Dave Filoni, in the ”To Catch a Jedi” Featurette on Starwars.com February 2013 (see S5 Blu-Ray)

“The game was conceived in 2009, we've been told privately, as a tie-in to a planned live-action Star Wars TV show. The show was set to take place between the prequel Star Wars trilogy and the classic one, as was the game. The game was called Underworld, according to one of our sources, and was, like the show, going to be for an adult audience. The 1313 title, after all, refers to the seedy underworld on the planet Coruscant, where crime, violence, drugs and other seedier elements exist. That underworld would be the setting for the show and the game.
        In what will surely drive fans of great Star Wars games a bit mad, Underworld/1313 was, we're told, originally going to be an open-world role-playing game similar to the beloved BioWare title Knights of the Old Republic but with episodic character updates delivered regularly over DLC. Story arcs would go to some dark places, touching on terrorism, the dealings of crime families and prostitution.

We're told that the game was scaled back in 2010 after budgetary concerns put the TV show was put on hold. The game was re-written with a new story that was disconnected from the TV-show material. And this is where what our sources say gets even more interesting. LucasArts supposedly was set to reinvent itself in 2011 under then-studio-president Paul Meegan, attempting to make Star Wars-style games in popular genres. There would be a Star Wars riff on FarmVille and a Call of Duty-style first-person shooter codenamed Trigger. 1313 was switched from codename Underworld to codename Hive and given platforming elements, similar to Sony's hit series Uncharted. A LucasArts rep declined to comment about any of this.

Development on the game began to proceed quite well going into either 2011 or 2012 when George Lucas himself apparently saw the game. One source mentions that Lucas "loved" the game and encouraged the developers to weave stories and characters from the TV scripts. The game's storylines would answer such questions as "Who is Boba Fett?", "Why was Han working for Jabba?" and "Who were the Bothan spies?" Lucas' requests were not to be ignored, that source says, leaving the developers of the re-named 1313 with a game that had backing from the man in charge but without a concrete story or characters. A new story was still in the works when the game was shown at E3 2012.”

-Stephen Totilo at Kotaku (via inside gaming sources), Kotaku article “The Strange Status Of Star Wars: 1313, A Hot Game With An Uncertain Future” March 1, 2013 (link) (this article is packed with info)

“This shot shows us the other bounty hunters fighting on behalf of the various crime families of 1313, all working together toward a common goal (though, as is typical of Star Wars lore, all bets are off once that goal has been completed). This was meant to tie into the live-action TV series, our source tells us, which was set on Coruscant and focused on the same crime families as the game.”

-IGN, “Star Wars 1313: Boba Fett Concept Art and Story Details” Article September 25, 2013 (link) (full transcript in 1313 section)

“This comes directly from George Lucas. Now George isn’t, you know, working on this show, but he really developed the era. He developed a lot of notes as to what happens between Episode III and IV and Rebels gets to benefit from that stuff. And one of the things that he described was the fact that clone troopers basically stopped production. Stormtroopers are like you and me. They’re citizens, they volunteer.

-Pablo Hidalgo, New York Comic Con “Rebels” Panel October 12, 2013 (link)

“Again, this stuff comes from some of George’s notes. Even though the cloning operations as we know them from The Clone Wars stopped, those clone troopers are still around. And they’re aging twice as fast as everyone else. Some of them... have gone on to become trainers of stormtroopers. And others have kind of been discarded by a society that never really appreciated what they were to begin with.”

-Pablo Hidalgo, New York Comic Con “Rebels” Panel October 12, 2013 (link)

"George provided all these notes about what happened after the Clone Wars, and we're designing the show with that in mind... We always are cognizant of what his idea was as far as what happens after Episode III.”

-Pablo Hidalgo, New York Comic Con “Rebels” Panel October 12, 2013 (link) (link)

“Steela is a character that George created. We wanted a brother/sister duo on Onderon, and the character Saw was a character that George had already created, and he just wanted to involve and tell a little more about that character. So in the course of that we created Steela [to be Saw’s sister], who would act as a natural foil to Ahsoka, as far as Lux was concerned.”

-Dave Filoni, Starwars.com Clone Wars Season 5 Interview Part 1 October 15, 2013 (link)

WIRED: Is it true that you also worked on developing a live-action Star Wars show?  

RDM: Yeah, I did. There was a team of writers that George Lucas put together, and we would go up and work at Skywalker Ranch every six or eight weeks. We would break stories with George and talk about Star Wars. I did a couple of scripts.  

WIRED: You can’t get off the hook that easily. What was it like?  

RDM: It was fun; there were moments when I would catch myself arguing with George Lucas about what Darth Vader would or would not do. Because you’re in a writers’ room, and you go back and forth. You’re telling the man, “I don’t think Darth Vader would do that.” And he says, “Yes, he would.” And you go, “Oh. Maybe he would, then.”

-Ronald D. Moore, WIRED Interview December 2013 (link)

"RDM: I did, for a time, work on what was going to be a Star Wars live-action series. We’d go gather at Skywalker Ranch periodically, every couple of months, and break stories and write scripts for this proposed series that George was interested in. And George was in the ring with us every day. And it was a fascinating, amazing experience. To sit there with George Lucas and be arguing stories and there was a point where I found myself in an intense argument with George about what Darth Vader would or would not do, and part of my brain kind of went, ‘What the hell are you doing? It’s like, are you really going to argue with George about what Darth Vader would do?’

NBC: Who won that argument?

RDM: George gets to win all his arguments.”

-Ronald D. Moore, NBC’s Last Call with Carson Daly c. March 13, 2014 (link 1) (link 2) (link 1 is to report by Star Wars Underworld fansite, link 2 is to RFR’s audio)

“The way the show was going to work was it was going to take place between Episodes III and IV. It was going to tell the story of a different side of the Star Wars universe that we didn’t exactly know, and then it was going to slowly fold back into the characters that you knew and loved.”

-Stephen Scaia, his Kickstarter campaign video June 10, 2014 (link) (Can watch the full video in link!)

“We told the story of how Han met Chewie, and how Lando lost the Millennium Falcon. I even got to pitch a Boba Fett action scene with his rocket pack.”

-Stephen Scaia, his Kickstarter campaign video June 10, 2014 (link) (Can watch the full video in link!)

“George revealed to us during Force Unleashed that if you don’t use it, you lose it. That eventually your connection to the Force will atrophy and you will not be nearly as strong. And I think that was part of the explanation for George for why Obi-Wan was not doing flips when he was fighting Darth Vader because he had been laying low and not really using his abilities... It was something that blew our minds because General Kota had a line ‘My connection to the force has been cut.’ And you go ‘What? What does that mean?’ And Haden Blackman would say no, George explained that many of the Jedi renounced the Force, renounced their lightsabers and disappeared into the background. And that their ability to use the Force eventually went away. And that maybe they could’ve gotten it back if they worked at it but that it atrophied.”

-Sam Witwer, Rebel Force Radio “Attack of the Clones” Commentary July 25, 2014 (link)

“One of the things I think I’m willing to say here cuz I kind of hinted at it at New York Comic Con a while back. For any stories that are now set in the so-called Dark Times between Episodes III and IV, the Story Group now has benefit to use a lot of exploration that George did over the past few years of what life was like in that time period. So we’re just able to really use a lot more of that authentic point of view of what he thought that period of time was. And it informs some of the decisions we make in Rebels and definitely informs some of the decisions we have in this book and in other ones we have coming out.”

-Pablo Hidalgo, San Diego Comic Con “A New Dawn” Panel July 25, 2014 (link) (backup audio link)

“I’ll say this about Tarkin, it really paints a picture of what Coruscant and the capitol and what the inner ports of the high Empire were during this period in time. And this all stuff that was very much informed by material George was mapping out prior to his retirement so it’s pretty exciting.”

-Pablo Hidalgo, San Diego Comic Con “A New Dawn” Panel July 25, 2014 (link) (backup audio link)

“To George, only things that appeared in the movies, or then later on his planned live-action TV series, or Clone Wars was canon. I mean, when I got this job, he told me point blank ‘I don't want you paying attention to anything else, just what I tell you about Star Wars.’ ... It was all the George Lucas education on Star Wars. Purely. And that was the six films he made and then later he started to fold in, y’know, the live-action TV series into what we were doing. And evidenced by like, when you see 1313 the game--and the clips that were released from that--well that, y’know, portal appears at the end of season 2 of Clone Wars. So at the end of season 2 we already had that in there years ahead of it. But it was all kind of planned together.”

-Dave Filoni, Rebel Force Radio, August 14, 2014 (link)

“[Battlestar Galactica] ran for four successful seasons, and would come to influence Lucas in the late 2000s, when he finally got around to planning a Star Wars live-action TV show.”

-Chris Taylor, “How Star Wars Conquered the Universe” September 13, 2014, p222

“In fact, as Lucas had announced back in April at Celebration III, Lucasfilm was already working on not one but two Star Wars TV series-- one live action, one animated. In fact, the very building itself [the Letterman building] was intended to serve as a production facility for Star Wars TV shows (and, if one line of discussion panned out, a whole TV channel dedicated to the franchise). These new initiatives -- and the ultimate fight for survival that developed between them -- would represent a kind of battle for the soul of Star Wars.”

-Chris Taylor, “How Star Wars Conquered the Universe” September 13, 2014, p372

“        The live action series, developed under the working title of Star Wars Underworld, had a great deal of potential. Lucasfilm was in talks with ABC, mostly, but also at one point HBO, for the rights to screen it. Centered on the Galactic capital of Coruscant in the two decades between Episode III and Episode IV, it would focus on the seedy underbelly of the Empire: the gangsters, smugglers, and bounty hunters who had been so missed by mature audiences in the prequels. It would also tie into a computer game of the same name (a game that was later renamed Star Wars 1313 and even later was shelved by Disney). Unconfirmed rumors suggest the series was to use Boba Fett as a recurring character. One ship we know was going to be featured in the show, according to design sketches: the Millennium Falcon.

        Underworld went through many years of intensive concept design. Lucas kept a small team of artists on the third floor of Skywalker Ranch, directly above his office, with private back stairs so he could reach them at any time (polite to a fault, Lucas would always knock). Technically, they worked for another Lucasfilm subsidiary, JAK Enterprises, named for the first letters of Lucas’ three kids. As one artist put it, George treated the third floor like his sketchpad.

        Rick McCallum executive produced Underworld alongside Lucas. Both men described the show as dark, Western-like, “Deadwood in space.” But it soon appeared to the artists that they had distinctly different ideas about what this meant. McCallum saw a largely indoor drama that could be made very cheaply. “But then George would come in and say ‘Let’s add another speeder bike chase,’” said a member of the production team. Lucas apparently wanted the show to focus on what the citizens of the galaxy did for fun. There would be more drag-race-style pod races. The boy racer had never grown out of his need for speed.

        It could have been worse. Lucas would tweak McCallum by suggesting that Jar Jar Binks join the cast. McCallum let loose with a string of expletives, according to witnesses. Lucas was joking, but then again, Jar Jar did appear in The Clone Wars animated show. With George, McCallum knew, you really had to push back hard on Jar Jar.

        Lucas and McCallum conducted a global talent search. They reached out to writers such as Russel T Davies, the Welsh showrunner who revived Doctor Who in 2005 (Davies was thrilled to be asked but too busy building his own little empire of science fiction TV shows). Rather than just set one writer to work on his own, the coproducers convened lavish multiday international writers’ conferences at Skywalker ranch; the assembled talent would laugh and chat and eat and drink, and returned home to write around a hundred scripts between them.

One of the leading writers in the Skywalker Ranch conference was Ronald D. Moore, the man who rebooted Battlestar Galactica. The Original Galactica, in 1978, had angered Lucas because, he said at the time, it spoiled the potential market for a Star Wars TV show. Then along came the series again in 2004, darker and far better and enrapturing all of geekdom for the next five years -- just as Lucas was attempting to fulfill the promise of Star Wars on TV. But Moore’s presence made it clear Lucas held no grudge. In fact, he and McCallum sought to emulate it as much as possible; the “sketchpad” on the third floor of Skywalker Ranch was assigned to watch Battlestar Galactica episodes to figure out how the show could look so good on less than $3 million an episode.

The trouble was, Lucas wasn’t envisioning the sort of show that could be made on a shoestring. All those speeder bike chases and pod races added up. Underworld episodes were being priced out at roughly $11 million apiece -- an original Star Wars every week. By 2009, Underworld was on the shelf, awaiting some form of future technology that could render galactic drag races more cheaply. “It would have been a great show,” says Ronald D. Moore. “I’m disappointed I never got to see it happen.” Then he casually revealed one of the characters involved: “I had the satisfaction of writing a few lines for Darth Vader.”

The chances of Underworld ever being made faded away. Lucas would start plundering the show’s art for use in The Clone Wars, from Season 2 onwards. Recycling ideas was a very Lucas-like trait, but some of the third-floor artists were upset. “We were building this show up, and it felt like bricks were being taken away,” said one. But the artists had to be sanguine about it, he added: “George viewed our art as one big toy box. Anything he wanted to pull out in a particular situation was fine by him.”                                                                ”        

-Chris Taylor, “How Star Wars Conquered the Universe” September 13, 2014, p373-374

Notes attribute some of these anecdotes to “Anonymous Lucasfilm Source.”

“The planet Kessel is first mentioned in Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope, but this is its first on-screen appearance. Star Wars Rebels uses designs and notes that George Lucas extensively developed for Kessel, describing its appearance, culture, and economy.”

[likely for Underworld, rather than Clone Wars, based on later evidence]

-”Spark of Rebellion” Trivia Gallery, Starwars.com circa October 3, 2014 (link)

“George gave Palpatine a first name, and the Story Group let Luceno reveal it.”

-Shelly Shapiro, New York Comic Con “A New Dawn” Panel October 11, 2014 (link)

[About the name Sheev in Tarkin]

“What happened was I was already somewhere in the first draft, maybe in revisions by that point, I heard from the story group. They asked me are you interested in revealing the name that George created-- I think it was for Underworld. The live-action TV series that was in the works a couple years back. I sort of got the sense, though, that George had had the name for quite a while and that people at Lucasfilm had been sitting on the name for a long time.

-James Luceno, Full of Sith Interview November 1, 2014 (link)

[on whether the show is still on] “I have no idea. The entire Star Wars things got sold to Disney so it’s over in the house of the mouse and whatever they want to do with that is what they’re gonna do with it and I’ve heard nothing so I don’t know.”

-Ronald D. Moore, Collider April 9, 2015 (link)

“Trust me, one of the great experiences of my life was sitting in a room with George Lucas and arguing about Darth Vader … It was like, ‘What would he say in this circumstance?’ And you find yourself, you’re sitting there going, ‘No! What are you talking about? He can’t say that,’ and then you catch yourself and you’re like, ‘What the fuck am I doing? I’m telling George …’ It’s like, how crazy is this? But he was a good sport about it and he was just like, ‘Alright. Fine.’ He’s like, ’No he won’t.’ I’m like, ‘Oh, then no he won’t.’”

-Ronald D. Moore, Collider April 9, 2015 (link)

“To answer the question about the, uh, Star Wars live action. I don’t believe Starkiller was ever going to be a part of that. I mean, these were all very insulated from each other. George was working on the live action while Force Unleashed was being worked on, and while The Clone Wars was getting into gear. And interestingly enough they--” [he gets cut off and never finishes]

-Sam Witwer, Youtube “Force Unleashed Livestream Ep 2” (2:13:00 into video) November 16, 2015 (link)

“The whole thing with Kota and the idea that people’s connection to the Force can be cut through misuse, disuse, all those things. And I believe... that that came from George.”

-Sam Witwer, Youtube “Force Unleashed Livestream Ep 2” (2:18:00 into video) November 16, 2015 (link)

“In October of 2012, I got a call from [Lucasfilm President] Kathy [Kennedy] and she said, "We're going to do some more movies. Can you come up and talk to George [Lucas] and I?" I went up and George had sort of roughed-out many movies — not just the new trilogy but other movies, the spinoffs and things. I wasn't sure I wanted to do anything, but I said, "I could do the Han Solo movie" — because he's my favorite character. Then they hired me to consult on "Episode VII." And within weeks suddenly Disney owned the thing and everyone was shocked.”

-Lawrence Kasdan, Los Angeles Times Interview December 3, 2015 (link)

[On if the Underworld scripts are not being looked at by LFL]

“No. No, interestingly enough, that's an area we’ve spent a lot of time, reading through the material that he developed is something we very much would like to explore. And there was 1313 the game, where there was…. [The concept art for 1313 was] Unbelievable. So our attitude is, we don’t want to throw any of that stuff away. It’s gold. And it’s something we’re spending a lot of time looking at, pouring through, discussing, and we may very well develop those things further. We definitely want to.”

-Kathleen Kennedy, Slashfilm December 9, 2015 (link)

[On Lor San Tekka] “He is a member of the Church of the Force, which is an interesting idea that George Lucas came up with during the development of his proposed live-action Star Wars TV series. Though that show never got made, there’s a lot of cool ideas and we actually transplanted that idea into his backstory”

-Pablo Hidalgo, Disney Fantasy Star Wars Day at Sea January 20, 2016 (link)

“So in that specific case the Church of the Force is an idea that’s been percolating sort of in the background of Lucasfilm projects for quite some time, it just hasn’t had a place to surface. In fact George Lucas first came up with the idea of what it is when he was developing the live action TV series years and years ago. So that’s an idea that we all knew... this notion that during the time of the Empire there is this underground church that venerated the Jedi or venerated their ideals but you didn’t have to be force-sensitive to be part of it.”

-Pablo Hidalgo, Star Wars Bookworms Podcast 53 February 19, 2016 (link)

[about Palpatine converting the Jedi Temple into the Imperial Palace] “I think it was the Vader comic that first depicted it. But the idea comes from old live action TV development”

-Pablo Hidalgo, Twitter February 22, 2016 (link)

“Fun fact that you may have missed at Celebration. With the exception of Rogue One, the standalone ideas came from George Lucas.”

[so the Han Solo ideas likely would be developed out of Underworld concepts]

-Pablo Hidalgo, Twitter March 12, 2016 (no link, tweet has since been removed)

“[on if he considers the material canon] the live action TV stuff? Without going into specifics, some of it has already made its way into stories, as far back as 2010”

-Pablo Hidalgo, Twitter March 18, 2016 (link)

“When George Lucas started exploration of what the criminal underworld of the galaxy was really like, he didn't consider it [Shadows of the Empire].”

-Pablo Hidalgo, Twitter April 10, 2016 (link)

“In 2008, he'd already started the ball rolling on hundreds of TV episodes that explicitly avoided the EU. Neat”

-Pablo Hidalgo, Twitter May 11, 2016 (link)

“He never considered it [The Force Unleashed] canon & was actively developing television material that disavowed it at the same time.”

-Pablo Hidalgo, Twitter May 16, 2016 (link)

“He [Starkiller] wasn't slated to appear in any of that storytelling.”

-Pablo Hidalgo, Twitter June 10, 2016 (link)

“Probably the really small beginnings of this idea, the germination of this — when I was working at Lucas, I was allowed to go up to the ranch and read the scripts for the [canceled live-action Star Wars] TV show. It was the most mind-blowing thing I’d ever experienced. I cared about the Emperor. They made the Emperor a sympathetic figure who was wronged by this fucking heartless woman. She’s this hardcore gangster, and she just totally destroyed him as a person. I almost cried while reading this. This is the Emperor, the lightning out of the fingers Emperor. That’s something magical. The writers who worked on that, guys from The Shield and 24, these were excellent writers.”

-Cory Barlog, VentureBeat June 15, 2016 (link)

“Yeah Saw’s been kicking around for a while. A lot of people know him from Clone Wars but he actually started off before that. George Lucas had him in mind for his live action TV series that he was in development, which ultimately never happened, but he found a place to put Saw into a story in Clone Wars.”

-Pablo Hidalgo, The Star Wars Show June 22, 2016 (link)

“So. Saw Gerrera. Yes, to reiterate, he was an idea developed for the proposed live action TV show, but was introduced in The Clone Wars. George Lucas, working in his inimitable non-linear way realized him as extremist first, and then revealed his backstory in The Clone Wars. (as an aside, there's a TON of live action TV ideas in The Clone Wars, going all the way back to Season 2) The idea, and we talked about this in Season 5, is that Saw was a key architect of the rebellion. But he's definitely not Mothma or Organa. Think of Saw as the uncle mom and dad don't talk about. Something bad went down. He's 'disowned' to some degree. Anyway, this stems from George's interest in history and current events and how art reflects it. Saw was militarized by the Republic to fight a proxy war against their worst enemy. A generation later, he becomes their worst enemy.”

-Pablo Hidalgo, Twitter June 22, 2016 (link) (also, Leland retweeted the part about live action TV ideas)

“He [George Lucas] was working on it [the live action series], in one form or another, since 2005”

-Pablo Hidalgo, Twitter June 25, 2016 (link)

“The way it [Empire Day] was used in Rebels comes from the Live Action TV series.”

-Pablo Hidalgo, Twitter July 12, 2016 (link)

“They said that they were gonna do a live-action show a long time ago. And when I had the Lucasfilm backing, it was more of a possibility of me being in that role [than it is now]. I used to work out with Ray Park every day just so I could get in shape and then do some flips like Darth Maul did as Boba Fett.”

-Daniel Logan, “Keeping Up With the Fetts” Panel at Celebration 2016 July 19, 2016 (link--at 25 min) 

“What happened was, in about I guess 2007, George Lucas decided… he was already writing and developing his Clone Wars animated series, and was enjoying jumping back into the Star Wars universe. He had been running writers’ rooms for Clone Wars, and he was enjoying the process of sitting down and chinwagging with other writers. He said I think the time has come to talk about doing a live-action Star Wars show. It had been rumoured for a long time.”

-Matthew Graham, Den of Geek July 21, 2016 (link)

“His producer Rick McCallum and associate producer Steve Irwin were basically given the task of travelling around and finding six or seven writers from around the world to bring in on the project. Rick has a particular love of British writers and Australian writers. Even though Rick wanted to bring in a couple of writers from Los Angeles, he wanted to staff the room up with people from outside too. As a result of throwing the net out, Rick and Steve watched Life On Mars and loved it. I had a meeting with Rick in London, and then they sent some tapes for George to look at. He watched a couple of episodes and really liked it. And then the next thing, I got one of those wonderfully surreal calls, are you available in two days’ time to go to London to meet with George Lucas?”

-Matthew Graham, Den of Geek July 21, 2016 (link)

“It went from being a bit surreal to very quickly getting chatting. I’d just bought a big new book that had come out about the making of A New Hope, and I was asking him about it, and we got really into it. Afterwards, I found out that a lot of writers had got very tongue-tied with George. Until George gets to know you, he’s a bit awkward. He doesn’t tend to look at you, he shrugs a lot. And he would have picked up on my nerves very quickly. But lots of those interviews turned into disasters. George wasn’t talking much, the writers weren’t talking much. Whereas I had a lot to say for myself [laughs]. We got chatting, and later I got a phone call saying I’d got the job!”

-Matthew Graham, Den of Geek July 21, 2016 (link)

“The other Brit that was hired was Chris Chibnall. Chris and I then flew to Skywalker Ranch every two or three months or so, for two weeks at a time, for two years. We had Australian writers, a couple of American writers. Sometimes people came and went. A couple of the American guys didn’t work out so well, so they left. Then Ronald D. Moore came in about six months into the process, and he did time with us. Towards the end we had a wonderful Irish writer called Terry Cafolla. He came in and joined us for the last three or four sessions that we did. We’d be with George from nine until five in the afternoon, and we’d break Star Wars stories.”

-Matthew Graham, Den of Geek July 21, 2016 (link)

“We were under no impression that there was an end. George wanted to create twenty-five scripts for a season, and then he was enjoying the process so much that he wanted to carry on and do two seasons’ worth of scripts. Which is very much his way of thinking. If he likes something, he takes it beyond what you think is possible to do.”

-Matthew Graham, Den of Geek July 21, 2016 (link)

“But what he’s really, really good at is being brave and bold, and saying let’s try new things. His new strategy, that was very bold, was let’s get fifty scripts that are really good, and let’s start making a show. We’ll know where the show’s going, we’ll be able to tell any actor or director that this is what’s going to happen in twenty weeks’ time. There was no talk about him selling the company. That was as big a surprise to us as it was to everybody. That was all going on very quietly behind the scenes. I think it happened very quickly. I’m not sure what made George suddenly decide that he wanted to get out. Because he was very happy developing Star Wars with us.”

-Matthew Graham, Den of Geek July 21, 2016 (link)

“We just came to the end of the process. He wanted fifty scripts, and we got to the point where there were fifty scripts. Some of them were at first draft, some at third draft. Some needed a lot more work, some were in a really good shape. We had a good sense of the overview of the world, and where it was going. And we shook hands, and hugged, and I said to George what a wonderful privilege to spend so much time with him, and I had a lot of fun. We did have a hell of a lot of fun. He’s a very funny man to hang out with.”

-Matthew Graham, Den of Geek July 21, 2016 (link)

“We would sit there and storyline, and Rick, the producer, would often be in the room. But if Rick had to go off for a couple of hours, George would look around the table at us as if to say, ‘now the producer’s gone… us writers can have some fun!’ And he’d whisk us down to his screening room, and we’d watch an old movie. He put on his personal print of American Graffiti and gave us a live director’s commentary while we watched it! He loved to do things like that, he really did.”

-Matthew Graham, Den of Geek July 21, 2016 (link)

“I can’t remember the timeframe. We worked on the show in 2008, 2009, maybe bled a little into 2010. I had phone catch-ups with the producers about when they were going to move the production to Australia. Then it all went quiet for six months or ten months or something, then suddenly I head that Lucasfilm had been sold to Disney.”

-Matthew Graham, Den of Geek July 21, 2016 (link)

“To start off, when Dave Filoni was first hired on to do the show, you gotta remember, this was like in 2005 and George had been saying that he was retiring. He’s been saying this since 1983 mind you, but in 2005 he’s saying ‘Yeah, I’m finally gonna retire. I’m gonna kick off some TV shows. I might get them started but I don’t think I’m actually gonna work on ‘em. But y’know we’re gonna do Clone Wars, we’re gonna do something else but I’m just gonna get ‘em started and step away.’”

-Pablo Hidalgo, Salt Lake Comic Con 2017 “How The Clone Wars Changed Star Wars” Panel September 3, 2016 (link)

“One of the stories that George was gonna explore was that this generation was actually abandoned. And we touch a little bit on it in Rebels in that they got replaced by people who volunteered. And the ironic part of it is you’ll find more uniformity and identical natures in patriotism than you will through genetic cloning. I thought that was an interesting statement that George was making. But some clones did become trainers and we see some of that in fiction.”

-Pablo Hidalgo, Salt Lake Comic Con 2017 “How The Clone Wars Changed Star Wars” Panel September 3, 2016 (link)

“The fact that he [Cody] did it [Order 66] makes me think that it was pretty much a switch. And I hate to say it but I imagine there were a lot of clones up late that night at the bar, just coming to terms with what they did and trying to convince themselves ‘Well, they’re traitors, turns out they were traitors.’ I’m gonna give you a little hint on something. The bar that Fives goes to-- [to Matt Martin] what is it called 71’s or 76’s?--that bar was gonna feature in in the live action TV series as a place where clones went to forget.”

-Pablo Hidalgo, Salt Lake Comic Con 2017 “How The Clone Wars Changed Star Wars” Panel September 3, 2016 (link)

[Was the novel DarthPlagueis de-cannon-ized because of how Maul was obtained from? Or were there other more important reasons?]

“Mainly because the story didn’t come from George – as well as things like Sifo-Dyas, Maul’s origin and Palpatine’s name”

-Pablo Hidalgo, Twitter September 29, 2016 (no link, Tweet removed)

[responding to some people whining about the Solo film] “As he retired, George Lucas left the launching points of several standalones. That he wanted [the Han Solo movie] made matters to some.”

-Pablo Hidalgo, Twitter November 19, 2016 (no link, Tweet removed)

[Why isn’t the Darth Plagueis novel canon? It makes too much sense and fits too well not to be canon]

“It makes assumptions about Palpatine’s backstory that are inconsistent with what George Lucas had in mind.”

-Pablo Hidalgo, Twitter November 12, 2016 (no link, Tweet removed)

[Rogue One wasn’t one of those launching points mentioned above] “Yep. That came from John Knoll.”

-Pablo Hidalgo, Twitter November 25, 2016 (no link, Tweet removed)

[Was the idea for any of the announced Star Wars Story movies from George? Rogue One? Han Solo? Any of them?] “the idea of doing standalone films came from George, as well as going into Han’s past.”

-Pablo Hidalgo, Twitter December 3, 2016 (no link, Tweet removed)

[Is the Darth Plagueis novel not canon because of the Maul stuff mostly?]

“And the Plagueis and Palpatine stuff. :)”

-Pablo Hidalgo, Twitter January 3, 2017 (no link, Tweet removed)

“George once trolled some writers by telling them that Han’s full name was Hannibal Solinski.”

-Pablo Hidalgo, Twitter January 9, 2017 

“The Church of the Force is an idea that predates the story group (it's like from 2009ish). Not sure what you're asking, though.”

-Pablo Hidalgo, Twitter January 30, 2017 (link)

“It’s longer than you might think — it was nine years. The first inklings of trying to tell that story happened in Summer 2003 when we were shooting on “Episode III” in Sydney. I had heard that Lucasfilm was developing stories for a potential live action TV series, and they were active in story development at the time. That was kind of intriguing, and I started thinking about, “What would be a fun thing to do as a one-hour episode as a live action ‘Star Wars’ TV show?” One thought was, “What about a ‘Mission Impossible’-style break-in into the most secure facility in the Empire to steal the Death Star plans? There could be a lot of tension of potentially being discovered and overcoming security measures. That could be a lot of fun!” I started tinkering with this idea internally. Then a day or two later, I asked Rick [McCallum], I heard you were developing this TV show. He started telling me about the era that it takes place in, and the themes of the show. As soon as he started going into that, I realized, actually, that idea has no place in that show, so I just dropped it completely.”

-John Knoll, CBR April 6, 2017 (link)

“Vader wasn’t the central character of the show. He was going to show up for a big two-part episode where there was this big uprising happening, and there was a crack-down on things that were happening on Coruscant. Vader shows up and is kind of like, ‘We’re gonna stop all this shit right now.’”

Moore explains that he can’t reveal “all the plot mechanisms” of the unrealized Star Wars TV show, but the fact remained that he, and an “international writers’ room” of talent all worked on writing scripts for Underworld for a number of years before the project was shelved in 2012. “It would have been like The Sopranos,” Moore says.

George Lucas was also a big Battlestar Galactica fan. “He was very complimentary of the show,” Moore says.

Moore also fondly recalls George Lucas’s unbridled enthusiasm for the abandoned Star Wars: Underworld project. “His mandate on the scripts were: ‘Think big. Don’t have any worries. We’ll make it. Budget is no object.’ So we wrote these gigantic pieces.” Hopefully, some day, fans will see a version of a series, but for now, it’s not likely.

-Ronald D Moore, Inverse Interview, May 4, 2017 (link)

“So the return of Rex. It was interesting cuz we were doing the math and figuring out how old the clones were going to be, and it all tied into an idea that George had kinda stenciled in the corner of his notes about what happens to the clone army. And I know he gave some thought to this and some very early development of live action TV. And the notion was that they were literally a discarded generation because they served their purpose, and once it became clear how independent they could be under the guidance of the Jedi, Palpatine had second thoughts about their utility.

-Pablo Hidalgo, Star Wars Celebration Orlando “Animated Origins” Panel April 13, 2017 (link)

[In regards to some of the elements of George’s Han Solo backstory from The Making of Star Wars like the gypsies and Wookies] “That's part of it. He added and changed parts of it over the years too.” [most likely in reference to Han’s role in Underworld]

-Pablo Hidalgo, Twitter May 20, 2017 (link)

[In regards to the live action series and its status in canon] “There are ideas in there that we stick to, but they were very very very far from finished.”

-Pablo Hidalgo, Twitter May 21, 2017 (link)

“The Saw narrative is pretty old and predates Syria. Saw has more in common w/ Afghanistan allies against the Soviets turning against the US. George worked on Saw years ago, like 2009 or earlier. He was trained and funded by the Republic to fight a proxy war and became a terrorist.”

-Pablo Hidalgo, Twitter June 24, 2017 (link)

“Stormtroopers *were* clones until around 2007 when he changed his mind and actually started telling stories with clones.” [Possibly in reference to post-ROTS material with clones for Underworld]

-Pablo Hidalgo, Twitter June 24, 2017 (link)

[Asking if Xicor will show up again]

“Our view of the criminal underworld in SW is much different than in 1996. If he did have a role, it would be significantly diminished.”

[Presumably this is due to developments on Underworld, which decreased the importance of the Black Sun, confirmed by Pablo on October 3, 2017]

-Leland Chee, Twitter August 8, 2017 (link)

[Asked about Lor San Tekka] “Lor San Tekka is evolved--the concept of him being a holy man and the Church of the Force is an evolution of two separate threads of storytelling. In the development of The Force Awakens he was often called the Vicar, he was the priest. And he was thought to be someone who was holy who believed in the Jedi but ultimately not a Force user himself. That idea actually dovetailed really with some ideas that George Lucas was exploring for a live action TV project that ultimately never happened, which was this underground Church of the Force, which were people who believed in the Jedi and all the good that they stood for but didn't touch on the Force themselves, they didn't have that ability. So they secretly worshipped and revered the Jedi in hidden churches across the galaxy, uh... that also became fronts for spreading rebel information. So we were able to take that little thread of storytelling that George Lucas was percolating with and dovetail it with Lor San Tekka.”

-Pablo Hidalgo, Salt Lake Comic Con 2017 “Behind the Books: Rogue One and Star Wars Propaganda” Panel September 22, 2017 (link) (recording released September 23)

[About George Lucas material left behind]

“        BY: They’ve been mining his material that he left. He left behind blueprints and hundreds-- or, I don’t know, how many scripts of Underworld were there? Can you answer that? Or, like, there’s a lot.

MM: I don’t know if I can. It's not a small number.”

-Brian Young and Matt Martin, Salt Lake Comic Con 2017 “Luke and Leia” Panel September 23, 2017 (link) (recording released October 2)

[On Shadows of the Empire or parts of it becoming canon] “The biggest strike against it is that George had some very specific thoughts about the galactic underworld and Coruscant that don't match.”

[what was his main difference?] “He didn't think Black Sun was the biggest syndicate.”

[What did he not like about Coruscant’s depiction?] “It's not a matter of disliking; I don't think he knew what was in SoTE. But his version of the underworld is different.”

-Pablo Hidalgo, Twitter October 3, 2017 (link)

[Pablo shown similarity between 1313 concept art and set photo from Ron Howard, and confirms it]

“Nothing ever goes to waste. :)”

-Pablo Hidalgo, Twitter October 7, 2017 (link)

[Someone is saying the new canon material should never have given Palpatine a first name]

“It came from a project George was working on; otherwise, he would've remained nameless.”

-Pablo Hidalgo, Twitter October 12, 2017 (link)

[About the Imperial Palace]

“I don't think Kanan knew. But it can't be destroyed because it's in Return of the Jedi. And George's idea is that it is the Imperial palace.”

-Pablo Hidalgo, Twitter October 15, 2017 (link)

“We made a decision back in Clone Wars that when Steela dies, it really altered Saw’s path. That he might have turned out to be a different person if his sister had lived. When George and I talked about Saw, we wanted to lay groundwork for his future, because he was always gonna be someone that was more of an extremist.”

-Dave Filoni, Rebels Recon “#4.3 and 4.4” October 23, 2017 (link)

“And for those wondering where the heck ‘Sheev’ came from, it’s been Palpatine’s first name since at least 2009, from TV development.”

-Pablo Hidalgo, Twitter November 4, 2017

[Was Quinlian Vos going to be in the live action series?]

“Never heard that Vos was for sure going to appear on the show. In fact, I’d heard it might have been a different character entirely.”

-Randy Stradley, Twitter, November 12, 2017 (archived with screenshot)

“In all seriousness, we did dig deep into some of the stranger places George Lucas went with the Force (*especially* The Clone Wars) as well as unreleased material and might've-been content from earlier drafts. It's a deep, strange well.” [presumably unreleased material includes Underworld in addition to TCW, especially given Witwer’s comments about George having the idea of a Jedi being cut off from the Force]

-Pablo Hidalgo, Twitter December 20, 2017 (link)

[discussing the LSG maintaining the spirit of George Lucas] “It’s the spirit of the films that we use as our-- And not just the films, I mean, spirit of The Clone Wars, spirit of some of the live action stuff that he was doing, and spirit of some of the zanier things. I mean, he was working on an animated series called Detours with Seth Green and that was just way out there.”

“But that definitely informs sort of like, you know, understanding what George was comfortable with and now it’s a matter of aligning with what we think Lucasfilm as it is now is comfortable with and what Disney is comfortable with.”

-Leland Chee, Syfy Wire The Fandom Files Podcast “Lucasfilm’s Top Secret Star Wars Files” January 15, 2018 (link)

[Is Emperor Palpatine’s first name Sheev?] “Yep. It came from George Lucas' development of a TV project many years ago.”

-Pablo Hidalgo, Twitter January 25, 2018 (link)

“I was also fascinated how George Lucas’ ideas about who stormtroopers were actually changed over time. It wasn’t until he began conceptualizing a Star Wars TV show that Lucas decided the stormtroopers would be normal humans rather than clones.”

-Adam Bray, “Stormtroopers: Beyond the Armor” SW.com Interview February 1, 2018 (link)

[Has Underworld helped shape some of the newer material?]

“It has absolutely helped inform things.”

-Pablo Hidalgo, Twitter March 1, 2018 (link)

[Asking what other project the Republic/Empire police gunship came from]

“These were developed for a live-action Star Wars TV series that never came about.”

-Pablo Hidalgo, Twitter March 8, 2018 (link)

[...I remember reading that George was working on a live-action series....are any of his ideas from that proposed series on the table to be used later?]

“Pieces of its mythology have shown up in different places, most notably Saw Gerrera in Rogue One.”

-Pablo Hidalgo, Twitter April 3, 2018 (link)

[Does Solo stick to George’s treatment?]

“He didn't have a treatment. More like 'you should do a Solo movie' and it does draws from several of the (admittedly contradictory) backstories he had developed for him over the years.”

-Pablo Hidalgo, Twitter May 12, 2018 (link)

“Prepare for some deep criminal underworld-lore cuts in #Solo, as well [mindblown gif]”

-Phil Szostack, Twitter May 23, 2018

“The true origin of Quay [Tolsite] and the Pyke Syndicate was known only within Lucasfilm: an alien originally sketched by concept artist Dave Hobbins in April 2007. Star Wars creator George Lucas plucked the design out of dozens (this one, in particular, a design for an alien Jedi) to represent the Pykes, asking for eyestalks that came out of its bulbous to be removed and replaced by what were then its nostrils, giving it an odd fishlike appearance. The Pyke’s head and costume design was honed in mid-2009 by Star Wars comic book and concept artist Doug Wheatley. Oba-Diah, aspects of Kessel, and the Pyke Syndicate’s role in the spice trade were all delineated and designed at that time as well.

        That same Pyke creature design was carried over into development of an unproduced Lucasarts video game called Star Wars: 1313, centering on Coruscant’s criminal underworld. In mid-2012, Lucasarts concept artist Colin Fix further refined the Pykes, leaning into the fishiness by adding a crab-like armored carapace to the back of their long craniums. Simultaneously, the Pykes were being ushered into Star Wars: The Clone Wars for their January 2013 debut by Lucas and creative director of Lucasfilm Animation Dave Filoni.”

-Phil Szostak, “The Art of Solo: A Star Wars Story,” May 25, 2018, p191

[I loved the film and it made me wonder, how much of it was based on the attempted live-action show George was developing?]

“Not really at all 'cause my dad and I never got to read those scripts, but I've ALWAYS been super curious about that show and thought of it often while we were writing.”

-John Kasdan, Twitter May 30, 2018 (link)

[About Ventress’ time as a bounty hunter]

“Yeah she’s very independent even as a bounty hunter. And that’s Boba’s team there. [referring to art on screen] And some of those ideas were crossing with things that were being developed in other projects. Like the big robot Highsinger there, [again referring to art on screen] who was unique. It had a very western vibe to it, so I was trying to capture some of that.”

[presumably these other projects are 1313 and Underworld]

-Dave Filoni, San Diego Comic Con 2018 July 19, 2018 (link)

[Discussing projects being developed before the disney sale]

“1313 as a show evaporated the second Grady Ranch as a production facility was rejected by the county.”

[Follow up: “Would Lucasfilm have left SF completely if Grady ranch had been approved?”]

“No, it'd just be for production space I think. I doubt the SF campus would have been affected.”

[Follow up 2: “I was under the impression that underworld and 1313 were different projects”]

“Yeah, but they were related as they both took place in the same environment, so their names tend to be used interchangeably.”

-Pablo Hidalgo, Twitter January 14, 2019 (link)

[Question: Is it true that 1313's entire first season was written?]

“It's been widely reported that there were a bunch of scripts done. And it's where certain things like Saw Gerrera came from.”

[Did a lot of Solo come from 1313 too? Like was George's idea initially that he would tell Han's origins, how he met Chewie/Lando, how he got the Falcon, etc in 1313 then he decided to work it into a film?]

“The Pyke and Kessel stuff was definitely informed by it. Beyond that, it's not my place to say. Oh, and Palpatine's first name comes from it.”

-Pablo Hidalgo, Twitter January 14, 2019 (link)

[Question: Is it true that George Lucas created the name Sheev?]

“Yep. Or at the least, it came from a project he was working on.”

-Pablo Hidalgo, Twitter March 26, 2019 

[About recently learning Palpatine’s first name]

“And it had existed since at least 2009!”

[Where?]

“It appeared in the scripts for the live action TV series.”

[Did GL come up with it or one of the writers?]

“It showed up in a script, so I don't know who originated it, but it certainly sounds like one of his names and he'd be aware of it given his involvement on that project.”

-Pablo Hidalgo, Twitter June 13, 2019 (link)

[Person bringing up a video about GL’s involvement in Force Unleashed]

“I worked on that too. :) Gotta wonder why he told his concurrent productions not to account for that story, regardless of his involvement.”

[Person insists GL was treating TFU as canon]

“But we know that wasn't his intent because, as stated earlier, he told his writers working on his television projects to disregard what TFU was doing in regards to that era.”

-Pablo Hidalgo, Twitter June 13, 2019 (link)

[About GL and TFU]

“He had a completely different 'origin of the rebellion' storyline in active development in his TV projects at the same time TFU was telling its version of things, and it wasn't a matter of not knowing about it.”

[Asked what show Pablo is referring to]

“This was the 'underworld' show.”

[Asked by another person if he’s referring to the live-action series, in regards to the rebellion stuff]

“Yep. But it worked it’s way into later Clone Wars.”

-Pablo Hidalgo, Twitter June 13, 2019 (link)

[On where George got the idea for using Talon]

“I think he liked Jan Duursema’s art. A non-Sith version of the character kept popping up in early live action TV development.”

-Pablo Hidalgo, Twitter July 16, 2019 (link)

[can we say Underworld is definitely dead as a doornail?]

“I’d never say never.”

-Pablo Hidalgo, Twitter August 19, 2019 

[In regards to this video]

“A source close to the project told io9 that the footage is real but not necessarily what the final series would have looked like—it was proof of concept. Because the show was going to be so expensive to make, producer Rick McCallum hired Stargate to shoot some test footage (not at all unusual in Hollywood) that Lucasfilm could then bring to TV networks. Lucasfilm did not have a comment on this footage or story and we had not heard back from McCallum or his production company at time of publication.

The hope was the footage would get one of the networks interested and it would agree to co-finance the project. So what you’re seeing here is the footage Stargate made after being hired by Lucasfilm. It’s real, but not a final representation of the show, merely a test. Where specifically the story in the footage came from, our source didn’t say. It’s possible McCallum gave Stargate a rough idea or the studio just did something on its own.

The point of the footage wasn’t the story, though; it was to convey tone, technology, and setting. It would have made clear the series was set on the streets of Coruscant (much like we saw in Attack of the Clones) and heavily influenced by a Blade Runner aesthetic. It was meant to follow the crime family that ruled lower Coruscant, sort of like The Godfather or The Sopranos, and Lucasfilm wanted the footage to show the advances in virtual sets that had been happening thanks to the prequels.

Apparently, networks reacted positively to the footage but, for reasons unknown, eventually passed on it. An educated guess would probably be money (Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead were in their infancy at this time, so spending millions of dollars per episode for a genre show simply wasn’t common yet), but since this was years before the Disney-led Star Wars resurgence, a perceived lack of interest could’ve been a factor too.

All we know for sure is that Lucasfilm hired Stargate to make something networks would get interested in, they didn’t, so the show died on the vine. But this was indeed footage Lucasfilm used to try and get it on the air.”

-Germain Lussier, io9 February 3, 2020 (link) [article mentions this very document!]

[Responding to a Tweet about meeting George Lucas]

“This is really funny. My own story: we worked with George Lucas on a show that never got made. At lunch my writing partner started playing Confirm or Deny, throwing every rumor he'd ever heard at George who played along. In every answer, Lucas minimized his own legend, downplayed his own brilliance. It's hard to be believably humble while sitting on your own ranch paid for by being right when everyone called you crazy, but he was. And he bussed his own tray. It made me respect him a ton and not have a lot of patience for the overwrought fan hatred. Also, it really put diva behavior by others in a new light. "George Lucas bussed his own tray" is a powerful antidote to anyone letting their ego off the chain.”

-Matthew Federman, Twitter May 4, 2020 (link)

[discussing getting approval from George Lucas on Jango Fett for the Bounty Hunter game]

“And then I had further in-person conversations with him about that, cuz he had been talking about a live-action show, at the time, that featured the world of the bounty hunters, and all this stuff.”

-Jon Knoles, Force Material Podcast May 4, 2020 (link)

[How long were you at Skywalker Ranch for?]

Uh, for the first like 3 and a half, four years.

[And how was that? Pretty amazing, I imagine.]

Yeah, that was awesome. And I’m still friends with everyone up there. Yeah it was a really amazing time. I had quite a number of meetings where it was just me and George up in the third floor of the main house, for hours working together. And I would not obviously trade that time for anything. I mean, just an amazing guy to work with. A thrill to be working on Star Wars with George Lucas. I mean, c’mon, that’s just the dream. So yeah no, it was an amazing time.

[Any funny stories from those meetings with George? I mean nothing personal obviously but any stuff that you can talk about.]

Well, I can tell you a little bit about my first day meeting George. I think it was my third day working at the main house, and George isn’t there every single day. But I walk in the door on my third day and I’m still like a bit wobbly in the knees walking in the front door because it’s still surreal like “I’m working at Lucasfilm, I’m working in the main house.” So I turn the knob on the front door of the main house and walk in the front door, and standing there is George Lucas, who I had not seen in a work context before, and a person in jumpsuit is handing him a lightsaber. And I’m like “What is happening? Like what?” And it’s kinda weird too cuz I’m like interrupting this moment. George doesn’t know who I am and it’s pretty awkward. So I go upstairs to the third floor where the art department is. And in a few minutes George comes up and it’s a bunch of people in jumpsuits from NASA. Space shuttle astronauts are returning Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber from Return of the Jedi to George Lucas and I am there to witness it. It was a very strange third day at work. And George is coming up to the art department to show off the art department to the astronauts. And he doesn’t know who I am. He’s like “And this is uhh..” And thankfully Fay David, who was the art department coordinator for the prequels was there helping me out, kinda getting me up to speed that day. So she was able to let George know who I was and that it was cool. But that was a really surreal early day for me at Lucasfilm.

-Phil Szostak, The ForceCast Interview May 22, 2020 (link)

Jon Favreau: When George came by the set [of The Mandalorian] and looked at the wall we had built, and we’re so happy and I’m getting ready to tell him “We’re the first people ever to do this, I mean people talk about it, but nobody’s actually done it.” .. “You didn’t have a video wall.” He says, “No, not a video wall,” but it was what the prequels were.

Kathleen Kennedy: Well he told me that it’s what he was building, or wanting to build at the base of the hill from the Ranch...

JF: Right. The Grady Ranch.

KK: ...that he never was able to do.

JF: It’s a virtual production.

KK: That’s exactly what he was setting up.

JF: He was a little bit ahead of what the technology could deliver.

KK: He always, always was 10 years ahead of his time.

-Disney Gallery: The Mandalorian, Episode 4 - “Technology” May 22, 2020

Collider (Steven Weintraub): There’s talk that back in the early--like 2011ish, that you worked on the live-action Star Wars series that Lucas was trying to get off the ground. Is there any truth to that?

RDM: Yeah! I was one of several, there was a bunch of international writers they assembled internationally and we would gather up at Skywalker Ranch once every six to eight weeks, something like that. And we would break stories together, and right after we’d go off and write some drafts and bring ‘em back, and George and we would sit down and critique them, and then do another draft and break more stories. And yeah I mean it went on for a year or something like that, a year and a half. It was great! It was a ball, it was a lot of fun. It didn’t happen ultimately, we wrote I’d say somewhere in the 40-something, 48 scripts, something like that. George wanted-- the theory was George wanted to write all the scripts and get ‘em all done and then he was gonna go off and figure out how to produce them, because he wanted to do a lot of cutting edge technological stuff with CG and virtual sets and so on. And so he had a whole new thing he wanted to accomplish. And what happened was, you know, we wrote the scripts and then George said ‘OK, this is enough for now, and then I’ll get back to you. I want to look into all the production things.’ And then time went by and like a year or something after that is when he sold Lucasfilm to Disney. So I think he just decided, it was the confluence of those events of either getting into this giant new Star Wars live-action TV show, or somehow-- he just decided to sell the whole kit and kaboodle around the same period.

Collider: It’s pretty crazy... nobody has 48 scripts written before you’re gonna start producing something, it’s crazy.

RDM: Uh, yeah, it’s kinda nuts. It was an extraordinary undertaking for someone to do. I don’t know anyone else that would really take that on.

Collider: I always heard that the scripts were too advanced for the technology that existed and I look at stuff like The Mandalorian and what they’re doing with these virtual sets. Do you think the technology has caught up to what you guys wrote on the page? Do you think they’re scripts that could still be used in the future? Or do you think it was sort of a time and a place and who knows what’s gonna happen?

RDM: Well, it’s hard to say because certainly we’ve come a long way with virtual sets and digi technology in the meantime. At the time, George just said ‘write them as big as you want, and we’ll figure it out later.’ So we really had no constraints. We were all experienced television and feature writers, so we all kind of knew what was theoretically possible on a production budget. But we just went, ‘For this pass, OK let’s just take him at his word just to make it crazy and big’ and there was lots of action, lots of sets, and huge set pieces. Just much bigger than what you would normally do in a television show. And we knew that at some point it was gonna have to dial back. So I don’t know that specifically there were any things we were trying to accomplish that you could or couldn’t accomplish with today’s technology, it’s just we didn’t focus on any production issues at the time that we wrote the original drafts.

Collider: When you guys were writing, were you writing with like 10 episode arcs or 20 episode arcs or was it one big 48 episode storyline?

RDM: It was pretty much one big storyline. It was one long tale with episodic things that would happen. You know, there would be certain events that would happen in this episode or this episode, so it was sort of an episodic quality to some of it. But it was telling a larger narrative, in terms of the story of those particular characters in that setting.

-Ronald D Moore, Collider Interview May 24, 2020 (link) (see video for source of full quotes)

[Describing his start with Lucasfilm:]

I went up there and my interview was with Rick McCallum.

...

[In those early days, what were you doing there (at Lucasfilm)?]

Pretty much the whole... few years that I was up at the ranch I was working on the live-action TV series and I was the coordinator of the art department up there. So just kind of leading this gang of concept artists who I was being introduced to for the first time, some of whom I knew, just through my experience knowing Star Wars and knowing concept art, but others who I was just meeting, three of whom were fresh out of college. So they were kind of starting their careers hitting the ground running, working with George Lucas up at Skywalker Ranch on the live-action TV series. But they had already been there--a lot of the artists had already been there for a couple years before I showed up [he started in February 2008]. The show was kinda moving to another phase where they would need someone like me to start organizing things and setting up meetings and working with George and stuff. So yeah it wasn’t enough --- in the period before I got there, it was just George and two artists I think for... a year maybe? And then, when I showed up the crew got a little bigger and I came in and started organizing all the work that had been started before me. So that was my first job, and yeah, it’s a crazy first job at Lucasfilm.

[So having worked on the original live-action show that never really got to happen, were you extra excited and happy then when Mandalorian actually came out and was able to get through completion?]

Absolutely. Yeah, it’s funny you mention that cause that’s something we’ve talked about and thought about in the Lucasfilm art department, which I’m a part of now, Doug Chiang’s art department, because quite a few of us, including Eric Tiemens and Ryan Church worked on that show. So it was full circle for those of us that worked on that twelve plus years ago, or started it at least then, to now be a part of the full realization of a Star Wars live-action TV series.

-Phil Szostak, Blast Points Interview June 9, 2020 (link)

“Learn the full story of how Jon Favreau’s early-2008 encounter with Dave Filoni at Skywalker Ranch, at the dawn of both the MCU and #TheCloneWars, led to the creation of #TheMandalorian a decade later, in  @ABRAMSbooks’ The Art of #StarWars: The Mandalorian, out December 1, 2020! Early-2008 was also not-so-coincidentally the start of my career at Lucasfilm, working at Skywalker Ranch. How *that* ties into The Mandalorian is likewise explored in the book. There’s a lot of Star Wars poetry and destiny at play in the creation of this show.”

-Phil Szostak, Twitter August 5, 2020 (link)

[question about the name of the protagonist of 1313 seen in the demo]

“I went straight to the top, Creative Director Dominic Robilliard, and he says his name was Ty Gerra. The other character in the demo was named Kellic.”

“HOLD UP -- Just heard from Dom again that he awoke in the dead of night with the memory of a later name that we gave this character - RAK JAREN. Technically that was the last name he was given before it was changed to Boba. Sorry for the confusion, it was 8 YEARS AGO!”

“A few more details as restitution: Rak Jaren was a refugee from the underground world of Subterrel and as the story went on he would eventually earn the nickname, "The Shadow Hunter." Good luck with the mods @DAZassassin ! Hope this helps.”

-Matt Boland, Twitter August 9-10, 2020 (link)

“Many of the design team members for George Lucas’ live-action #StarWars TV series (myself included) reunited a decade later for Jon Favreau’s Mandalorian TV series. Hear the full story in

@ABRAMSbooks’ The Art of #TheMandalorian, out December 1 but available for pre-order now!”

-Phil Szostak, Twitter September 13, 2020 (link)

[Responding to that previous tweet: I assume nothing gets thrown away. I mean, I guess it's your job to make sure it doesn't.]

“Yep- that’s one aspect of my job, for sure. Been digging into the archive more and more lately.”

-Phil Szostak, Twitter September 13, 2020

[Are we ever going to see George’s show? I heard that seasons of scripts were written and all ready to go. Between that show and the loss of the Boba Fett game, it was a rough time.]

“Believe me, I know. I worked on both projects for five years.”

-Phil Szostak, Twitter September 13, 2020

“Both The Clone Wars animated series and the very first live-action Star Wars television series were announced by Lucas in late April 2005 at the perennial Lucasfilm-sponsored fan convention, Star Wars Celebration, in Indianapolis, Indiana. These projects marked a turn toward television as Star Wars’ primary storytelling medium.

        Design work on the then-unnamed live-action television series set in Coruscant’s criminal underworld (with bounty hunters appearing in secondary roles) began, in earnest, with the hiring of concept artists Johathan Bach and David Hobbins to JAK Films (Lucas’ production company, named for his children Jett, Amanda, and Katie) in late November 2006. Bach and Hobbins were later joined in Skywalker Ranch’s Main House by concept artists Fabian Lacey and Kinman Chan, design supervisor Erik Tiemens, and art department coordinator Phil Szostak, with Ryan Church contributing concept art remotely. Over a decade later, Hobbins, Lacey, Tiemens, Church, and Szostak would reunite to work on another live-action Star Wars television series, The Mandalorian.

        Given the two shows’ concurrent development, story seeds and designs from the live-action series, including Level 1313 of Coruscant’s underworld, militant rebel Saw Gerrera (later added to 2016’s Rogue One: A Star Wars Story), droid bounty hunter C-21 Highsinger, and the alien Pyke Syndicate (also seen in 2018’s Solo: A Star Wars Story), were planted in The Clone Wars, intended to pay off later.

...

        But by mid-2010, with fifty scripts drafted by a writer’s room led by Lucas and thousands of pieces of concept art generated, the live-action series was put “on hold” due to budgetary concerns.”

-Phil Szostak, “The Art of The Mandalorian” page 27 December 1, 2020

“...Star Wars Rebels went into full production in early 2013. Over time, ideas from Lucas’ live-action series, such as the formation of the nascent Rebellion, would also be folded into Rebels.”

-Phil Szostak, “The Art of The Mandalorian” page 27 December 1, 2020

“The barrier of entry for Star Wars TV for many years was simply the scope. I don’t think anybody would accept a Star Wars TV show where you didn’t visit vastly different environments. This technology allows us to achieve that visual bar faster than you would expect to do through traditional movie techniques.”

-Richard Bluff, “The Art of The Mandalorian” page 179 December 1, 2020

“        For Matthew Graham, the phone call he’d been waiting for since he was a nine-year-old Star Wars fan arrived in the incongruous setting of a field outside Frome. It was from his agent.

        “Are you sitting down?”

        “No,” Graham replied. “I’m in a field.”

        “Just sit down in the grass then,” said the voice,” because I’m about to tell you that you’re being considered for Star Wars!”

        “It’s that thing you dream of, isn’t it?” Graham enthuses now, recalling that career-quake call. “It’s the ultimate daydream!”

        The Star Wars that Graham -- then flying high on the success of Life on Mars, the genre-splicing series he’d co-created with Tony Jordan and Ashley Pharoah -- was being invited onto was a super hush-hush TV project that Lucas had announced, to ear-splitting applause, two years previously at Celebration III. Rick McCallum, Lucas’ loyal deputy at the time, would later confirm that the series was to be called Star Wars: Underworld and would be like “Empire on steroids.”

        Where the Star Wars movies had told simple stories of clean-cut heroes fighting the good fight, Underworld would instead, it was intimated, echo the dark, morally ambiguous worlds of The Sopranos and The Wire. It would have been Star Wars’ first live-action TV series and, as it was planned, one of the most expensive shows -- if not the most expensive show -- ever seen on the small screen. For seven years, Lucas and McCallum teased and titillated us with nuggets of news: It would be set in the 19 years between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope; it was budgeted at around $5 million per episode; it would in no way feature heritage characters; it would feature heritage characters; it was “Deadwood in space” ... And so on.

        Then, on 30 October 2012, Disney bought Lucasfilm for an eye-watering $4.05 billion and amid the media noise of the sequel trilogy, Underworld was quietly forgotten about. When Star Wars’ first live-action series dropped in 2019, it wouldn’t be Underworld, though much of what we’ve seen in Jon Faverau’s bounty hunter show owes a debt to that lost series.

        “I don’t think we were a million miles away from The Mandalorian,” Matthew Graham tells SFX. “It was pretty dark: we had rape, we had drug-taking and drug abuse, we had beheadings, It was definitely not your grandfather’s Star Wars -- it wasn’t cert U.”

        Let’s rewind back to 2007, to the time that Underworld entered Matthew Graham’s life. It was a few weeks after that Somerset field phone call that Graham found himself on a train to London to hook up with Lucasfilm’s Rick McCallum for a getting-to-know-you power lunch.

        “I really liked him,” the writer says of the prequel trilogy’s charismatic producer. “He’s a tremendous larger-than-life character, a real raconteur, at the time a real chain-smoking cheeseburger-munching, wine-at-lunchtime bon viveur.”

        In many ways, the complete opposite of his boss, then. When Graham finally sat down, a few months later, with the notoriously shy George Lucas it was in a “really downmarket” London hotel that Lucasfilm had hired to interview a host of writers that McCallum had been sourcing from around the country. As Graham was waiting anxiously by the lift, a writer he recognized stepped out, ashen-faced. “I was like, ‘Oh fucking hell, maybe this is going to be really scary!’” he laughs.

        Blessedly, it wasn’t. Graham had just been reading JW Rinzler’s definitive coffee table tome The Making of Star Wars and, when he sat down in front of Lucas, launched straight into a question about greenscreen versus back projection. As he was nattering away, Graham glanced over Lucas’ shoulder and saw McCallum giving an encouraging thumbs up gesture. It was working.

        Half an hour later, as Graham left the room McCallum told him, “You did really well, George obviously felt very comfortable with you,” admitting that some of the other writers had clammed up. “They were so overwhelmed being with George,” he told him. “The problem is George will never be the one to break the ice -- if you seize up, he’ll seize up.”

        “George is a very shy person and he takes a while to warm up and get used to being with people that he doesn’t know,” says Graham. “He’s wary of people -- not in a nasty way, but I think he worries that people would want something from him.”                                “

-Steve O’Brien, “Going Underground” Article, SFX Magazine 336, February 2021

“        Home on the Ranch

        Within a few months Graham found himself on a plane to the US and to the Skywalker Ranch, alongside fellow Brit Chris Chibnall. Also en route were a US writer named John Steinberg (who’d go on to create the Starz show Black Sails) and three Austrailians: Tony McNamara (recently behind Netflix show The Great), Louise Fox (Glitch) and Jaqueline Perske. “The Australian writers didn’t really know Star Wars at all,” reveals Graham. “Unlike us, they weren’t Star Wars nuts, they’d only really watched the films in preparation for coming out to Skywalker Ranch.”

        When this motley band of writers arrived at the palatial Marin County hacienda, there were no scripts but Lucas had been working furiously on the “world-building,” according to Graham.

        “There’s probably only so much I can tell you about the specifics,” Graham cautions, “but what I can tell you is that it was predominantly set on Coruscant and that George had come up with these crime families who lived in the lower levels of the planet.”

        The show would, he says, have started in the aftermath of Order 66, the instruction from Palpatine in Revenge of the Sith ordering the execution of all Jedi. “Lucas said if the Star Wars movies were World War Two told through the eyes of all the generals and the captains and the world leaders, he wanted this show to be told through the eyes of the criminals and lower classes. To be honest, initially there wasn’t a lot of [the] Empire in it -- it was mostly stories within the world of the criminals,” he adds.

        Later on, the group was joined by Ronald D Moore, the former Star Trek scribe bringing with him some of the political grit that he’d introduced to his Battlestar Galactica reboot a few years previously. “George really liked that,” Graham says. “After that, we created some Imperial characters that became protagonists, because we decided that not everyone in the Empire was evil. I mean, not everyone spends their time hanging around with Darth Vader. Most people just got on with the administrative business of running an empire.”

        There was also a character that Graham and Chibnall created who worked as a detective. “He was such an interesting character that Chris and I worked on an idea that we pitched to George called Imperial Crime Lab, which was basically Star Wars meets CSI,” he beams. “That would have been awesome!”

        Among the writers, there were broadly two camps. In the fanboy team there was Graham, plus Ron Moore, John Steinberg, and Chris Chibnall, and in the other, the less mythologically in-thrall Aussie scribes. “They didn’t want to come up with names for anything,” Graham laughs. “I remember Tony McNamara having a Corellian bar, and literally in the script it said they were drinking cappuccinos and eating lasagne! I got really upset about this and Tony said, ‘Well I don’t fucking know what they’re eating -- fucking boo-boo juice!”

“But George was absolutely great,” Graham continues. “He said ‘I know what you’re saying. Say lasagne, that’s fine, we know what you mean -- I’ll come up with a word for it later.’ What was very interesting though is that the Australian writers took it to places that were non-fanboy and therefore tended to be more dramatically interesting. We realized it was about finding a path between making it Star Wars but not making it just fanboy service, because it had to stand on its own as a real piece of drama.”

-Steve O’Brien, “Going Underground” Article, SFX Magazine 336, February 2021

“        All That Jazz: Lucas’ Ideas for Underworld’s music were unusual

        As with The Mandalorian, the plan was for Underworld not to use any classic Star Wars themes. Recalls Matthew Graham, “George said, ‘We’re not going to have the John Williams music,’ and I went, ‘Aw, no, that’s not Star Wars!’ Then he said, ‘We’re going to have [‘50s/’60s TV detective drama] Peter Gunn-type music. I want it to be freeform jazz on the soundtrack.’ I was like ‘Noooo, George! I understand you don’t want your John Williams but please don’t make it freeform jazz! That’s like anti-Star Wars - it’s like you’re trying so hard not to be the films that you’re going to be anti-Star Wars!’”

-Steve O’Brien, “Going Underground” Article, SFX Magazine 336, February 2021

“        Curious George

        “I’ll happily go on record and say George is a really nice man,” says Matthew Graham about his one-time boss. “But he likes things done his own way. He is very stubborn, and if he doesn’t agree that something should be like that, and he disagrees with you, you could end up in a very deep war of attrition to persuade him!

        “But the genius of George is that as a producer he operates 10 years ahead of everyone else. People criticize those prequels, but George really wanted to break new ground; he wanted to go to places and do things that we’d never done before, and that’s what he was trying to do. He didn’t just want to give you what you’d seen, he wanted to give you things you’d not seen. We could argue about how successful he was about that, but what I love about George is that he’s always prepared to take risks and go off into those places.”

-Steve O’Brien, “Going Underground” Article, SFX Magazine 336, February 2021

“        A Meaty Role

        Early whispers indicated that Underworld was going to resist using already established Star Wars characters, but, as Graham notes, “George has very, very strong opinions that he will not budge on... until he budges on them.” Graham won’t be drawn on which classic characters Lucas was planning on weaving into the series, but internet scuttlebutt hints that Boba Fett was in line for a meaty role, and that Darth Vader was going to lend his dark charisma to the show after an uprising on Coruscant. There was even talk that the series would have explored Han Solo’s origins -- a story eventually told, of course, in Ron Howard’s Solo.

        While Lucas was working with Graham and co on the scripts, he was also developing the show’s eye-wowing visuals. Graham vividly remembers the day when Industrial Light & Magic’s John Knoll screened the writing team the tests that his people were doing, creating the digital sets for George’s dream project. “Everything looked way more photorealistic than the prequels so much so that you actually couldn’t tell that you weren’t moving through a real space,” he says excitedly. “They’d actually managed to take some of the old sets from the original trilogy and create these virtual 3D environments. What it allowed you to do was, in theory, according to George, to tell very epic, expensive episodes on a TV budget.”

        The Rebel Alliance of Underworld writers would convene at Skywalker Ranch every few months, for two weeks at a time, to brainstorm ideas and beaver away on scripts. Yet it wasn’t all hard graft. Graham smiles as he remembers one afternoon when, after McCallum left the meeting room, George looked around the table and said, with a mischievous glint in his eye, “Well, the producer’s gone, which means us writers don’t have to do any work. Let’s go to the screening room!”

        The writers would then file across to Lucas’ state-of-the-art cinema, where their boss would screen them 35mm prints of Willow and American Graffiti, while providing a live director’s commentary. “He loved to do things like that, he really did,” beams Graham.

        In all, 50 scripts were written for Underworld. Lucasfilm’s art department had been busy designing its worlds and Graham believes there’d even been some preliminary casting. Towards the end of his time on the series, Graham was jetting out to the show’s Sydney production base to work on the scripts, making sure they all “matched up.”

        Just as Graham remembers the call that started his Star Wars life, he remembers the phone call that ended it: “It was from Rick McCallum, to say he had some disappointing news,” he recalls. “He said, ‘George has just announced that he’s selling Lucasfilm to Disney. We don’t know what’s going to happen -- the scripts may be mothballed, or who knows what.”

        Disney eventually decided to close the door on Underworld, and, over eight years later on from that surprise announcement, it seems that Lucas has really retired for good. Graham says the news came as a shock to pretty much everyone at Lucasfilm. No-one (not even his deputy it seems) saw it coming, and Graham is as mystified as anyone else as to Lucas’ reasons for shutting up shop so abruptly. Surely, after so much hard graft, working for his hero on the job of his childhood dreams, he was crushed by the news that Underworld was no more. Amazingly not, it seems.

        “When I was a kid I saw Star Wars,” he says, “and when I was a little bit older I started writing Star Wars stories, and then I was forty-something and I was working on Star Wars with George Lucas! I’d sort of won the game. If it’d been made, it would have been amazing but I didn’t need it to be made. I’d done it, you know?”

-Steve O’Brien, “Going Underground” Article, SFX Magazine 336, February 2021

“        By the mid-2000s, writer and producer Ronald D Moore was a major player in sci-fi television. He came up in the medium the old-school way, steadily moving up the ladder of experience, eventually gaining the kind of critical cred that translates into creating and showrunning his own series.

        His eight years on the Star Trek franchise, from The Next Generation through to Voyager, taught him the creative churn of script turnaround while honing his skills in the writers’ room and on the set. He then transitioned to executive-producing Roswell and Carnivale, and rebooted Battlestar Galactica into a gritty modern classic. It’s not surprising, then, that Moore was on the radar of another sci-fi creator who was looking to put together a team to transition his popular space opera universe onto the small screen.

That guy was George Lucas, of course, who as we’ve already discussed was at the time exploring how the television medium might be a more conducive landscape for the kind of expanded, serialized, and grittier storytelling he couldn’t do on the big screen with Star Wars. This would have been the Star Wars’ universe’s first live-action TV series, Star Wars: Underworld.

While Lucas and his producing partner Rick McCallum had successfully created The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles for ABC in 1992, for all intents and purposes that series operated more like a blockbuster film, with huge budgets and massive international filming. Expensive and unwieldy to produce for a US broadcast network, it was impossible to sustain for many seasons. Even a decade later, any live-action Star Wars television show would have to bend to the medium more.

What was needed was someone with the right sort of experience, who could help counsel one of the most innovative and successful filmmakers in history on how to tailor his big-screen creative process for the more fiscally conservative boundaries of TV. Someone like Ron Moore, who was sought out by Lucas and McCallum because of their admiration for his work in genre TV.

Moore actually learnt of their interest via industry whisperings about Lucas seeking writers for a potential Star Wars TV project. As it turned out, Moore was on their list.

Though no details were provided, Moore still jumped at the chance to talk with Lucas about it. And as he’d already met Lucas back when he was working on Roswell (when he paid a visit to the set), he didn’t have a bad case of nerves.

“We met in LA at some office and had the first sit-down and chatted about the parameters of the project,” Moore remembers. “George didn’t give very much about the project itself in that meeting. We didn’t even talk about Star Wars to a great extent. I think he asked ‘How well do you know it? And what do you think of it?’ And I talked a little bit about it. But most of the conversation was about science fiction in general.”

Lucas and McCallum made it more of a personal interview about general sensibilities and Moore’s views on influential sci-fi. “We talked a bit about Battlestar and Stark Trek,” he explains. “How I got the battlestar project. Why I made some of the choices [for that show]. So it was kind of digging into me a bit more.”

They gelled in that initial meeting, which led to a follow-up where Lucas was more forthcoming about his intentions for the show. “It was really interesting, because one of the first things he said was that he wanted to do something darker and more serialized,” Moore says. “It was more inspired by The Sopranos, which was the touchstone for what he was trying to do, rather than the big action adventure space opera that was Star Wars.

“It was definitely part of the same universe, but the context and the intention was very different.”

Moore says that was immediately exciting to him. “It was really fun to know it was part of the Star Wars universe that hadn’t been touched. It was kinda cool not to have to engage with the larger mythology of the Rebel Alliance and the Empire and the Skywalker family. We were definitely doing something that was adjacent to it, and those elements were out there and would be referenced periodically, but that wasn’t the focus of the show. We were gonna try to do quite a radical departure from what had been done before.”

Once Moore expressed his interest to be part of it, Lucas revealed that he had already been talking to other writers from different countries: “That was the first inkling I had of the scope of what he was trying to do.”

Ultimately, Moore was one of the last to join what would be the Underworld writers’ room which assembled at Skywalker Ranch in California. Because of Battlestar Galactica’s production needs, he missed his first few days. “I don’t think I even knew who the other writers were before I got there,” Moore admits. “I was introduced to them when I arrived.”

All seven writers lived in the inn on the property and met in the main house at Skywalker Ranch. “We would troop up to the main house and meet in the conference room with George,” Moore details. “George would sit at the head of the table. We’d all sit around it, and there was a traditional writers’ room white dry erase board.

“George had never worked in that format before, per se,” he explains about the dynamics of the room. “He was clearly the head of the room, but he didn’t have a fixed idea of where it was going. So it evolved organically.”

With Lucas used to generating Star Wars story ideas alone, to be scripted himself, Moore says that in the early days of the room he had to learn to translate was what was already fleshed out in his head to the group. “He would realize that he had an idea but didn’t always share the framework,” Moore smiles.

As in other writers’ rooms, Lucas would field pitches from everyone, with some landing and some not. Moore says, “It took multiple sessions of sitting and talking and just getting familiar with each other to get to a level of trust where George started to talk more and more about really what he wanted to do. We started to realize that he did have plans and ideas in his head that he was reticent to give at the beginning. And over the course of time and sessions, you started to realise his dream.”

-Tara Bennett, “Help Me Ron D” Article, SFX Magazine 336, February 2021

“        The Debate Team

        Asked how Lucas was as a note-giver, Moore admits, “George had a few here and there. But he wasn’t into giving notes. I think he didn’t want to be that kind of executive. When you were breaking the story and figuring out who the characters were, that’s when George would engage. And that’s when I’d find myself arguing with George Lucas about who Darth Vader is and what’s right and wrong in this,” he laughs. “Part of the fun of being in the writers’ room is the argument, and anything is up for debate. But you’d catch yourself and go, ‘What the fuck am I doing?’ sometimes: not realizing I’m arguing with George Lucas about what works in a Star Wars project!”

-Tara Bennett, “Help Me Ron D” Article, SFX Magazine 336, February 2021

“        The Dark Side

        Moore says that eventually they got a clear sense of the key players Lucas envisioned, along with the framework of the show. “The actual structure and pace and rhythm, that all grew organically as we sat there.

        As they fleshed out the show more and more, the tone developed as promised by Lucas: dark. “I think it was definitely Sopranos-esque in terms of the ambiguity of the morality of the characters, and the darkness of the characters themselves and their moral compasses,” Moore says. “And it was about a crime family, so there were killings and murders.”

        As to how many episodes would make up a season, Moore remembers that deciding on an actual count wasn’t a priority for Lucas. “He said right up front, ‘We’re gonna write a bunch of scripts. And we’re gonna write a lot more scripts than a typical season, and then I’m gonna produce them all. And then we’ll take them out to a network once they’re done.’”

        That approach was completely foreign to the writers in the room. “We all went, ‘Whoa! Well, that is really different and very ambitious’,” Moore laughs. “And only George Lucas could even attempt to do something like that.”

        As writing assignments formalized, Moore ended up writing two scripts featuring characters created purely for Underworld. “It was pretty much all our original characters. But in one of them, I did get to write some lines for Darth Vader, which was really fun. But he was the only legacy character that popped up.”

        Despite all the scripts generated and the binders of concept work completed to realize its world, the series died when Disney bought Lucasfilm. Officially shelved, their work went into the archives.

“It remains a very special time and was something that I was thrilled to do,” Moore says of the whole experience. “And it was a unique group of people that never really assembled again. Plus, seeing George Lucas every day, you knew you were just in a very special realm. I don’t know that it changed me as a writer, but it certainly changed me as a person.”

While the Disney+ series The Mandalorian has now taken the “first live action Star Wars” show mantle, Star Wars: Underworld might have done. Moore says that the thing in the Star Wars universe that most resembles what they intended to do is Rogue One.

“It’s probably the closest because it went darker, edgier, a little more ambiguous in terms of the characters than the rest of the movies that I’ve seen,” he concludes. “It felt like, ‘Yeah, that’s in the realm of what we were trying to accomplish.”

-Tara Bennett, “Help Me Ron D” Article, SFX Magazine 336, February 2021

“On this day in 2008, I drove up to Skywalker Ranch for my very first day at Lucasfilm. My 13th year was a challenging one, and not just for the obvious reasons. So I want to thank everyone who supported me this year and every year, especially you amazing Star Wars fans”

-Phil Szostak, Twitter February 7, 2021 (link)

THR: You flirted with a Star Wars live-action show with George Lucas for ABC nearly a decade ago and it never got off the ground. And now you're at Disney at a time when they've got a dozen live-action Star Wars shows in development. How many conversations and how many different ideas have you already pitched about going in and doing a Star Wars show for them?

RDM: It's always something that's on my mind but clearly, they have their Star Wars plate full at the moment. I'm not sure this is the moment that you go in and pitch a new Star Wars series over there. I would love to do something in that franchise. It was fun to go work on the abortive live-action show that I did way back when. I got a tremendous amount of thrill of writing lines for Darth Vader in one episode and it would be fun to do that again. It's just not the first piece of development I'm doing over there but hopefully I'll be allowed to do that at some point.

THR: How do you look at the fact that we have a landscape in which two months ago Disney announced a dozen Star Wars shows? How does that even process in your brain?

RDM: It's amazing. I am old enough to have gone to Star Wars in the summer of '77 and seen it originally and then you had to wait years to see the next one. Now it's just fun. I used to read the novelizations and the comic books in between movies and you saw what a rich universe it was and how many stories you could tell in so many different ways. The idea that they are now spreading out the Star Wars saga as not just the main line of the Skywalker story but doing things like The Mandalorian and all these other shows … I can't wait to see all the different possibilities that get opened up.

... [They discuss Star Trek becoming vast and intimidating]

THR: Can you imagine that becoming the case with Star Wars at some point or do you have a different appetite for the two different franchises as a viewer?

RDM: It's a different scale. There's more ground to cover for Star Wars because they haven't spent so much time doing so many projects. Whereas with Star Trek there's so many episodes of so many series that are laying this immense, gigantic web of continuity. I was excited when J.J. Abrams came along and rebooted the franchise and went back to the original series. However, I thought that not cutting the cord completely to the original series and literally starting over was a mistake because they kept all the rest of the continuity. It's hard for me to imagine what it is to be a new viewer of Star Trek today because there is so much to try to digest.

THR: Do you have a Star Wars pitch should that opportunity to pitch one suddenly present itself at Disney?

RDM: Nothing fully formed but I've got a couple of notions in the back of my head — ideas and arenas that I think would be fun to poke around the corners of the Star Wars universe — yes.

-Ronald D Moore, “Ron Moore Is Ready to Make a 'Star Wars' TV Series” Article, The Hollywood Reporter, February 22, 2021 (link)

“Thinking back to the time when I was an exec at Sci-Fi (now Syfy) and there was a meeting where Sci-Fi TURNED DOWN a live-action Star Wars series. This was all pre-Disney. I still can't believe it. I argued we should mortgage the network and do it.  Alas.”

[Q: Was this the series Lucas had dozens of scripts for and had already shot some footage with the guy who played Jothee, D'Argo's son, on #Farscape? Was the pitch just on paper or did they have demo reel?]

“I believe there were about 20 episodes written but I’m not sure.”

-Craig Engler, Twitter, February 23, 2021 (link)

[in response to a Tweet showing concept art binders at LFL circa 2003]

“Five years later, I would spend a lot of time hauling those very binders (and others of my own creation) down to Clone Wars, Detours, and #StarWars live-action TV show writers conferences, as coordinator of the JAK Films art department. Miss those days in the Main House.”

-Phil Szostak, Twitter March 8, 2021 (link)

“[The Emperor] didn’t become a Force-user until The Empire Strikes Back. We didn’t know he was a Dark Lord until 1998’s Star Wars Encyclopedia. He didn’t get a first name till a 2009 live action TV script.”

[On that note... Aside from the name "Sheev" for Palpatine, Saw Gerrera, and the basic pitches for the stories that would be made into Rogue One and Solo, are there any other big ideas from Star Wars Underworld that made it into the canon material released so far?]

“A few name little drops here and there that will hopefully grow into something someday. Some of it shows up as early as S2 of The Clone Wars.”

[Another piece of me dies every time I’m reminded, I’m not patient enough for this.]

“When one of the next series comes out, maybe I'll post how old the first email on the subject was. These things sometimes take aaaaaaaaaaages to find their way into the world.”

-Pablo Hidalgo, Twitter, May 14, 2021 (link)

[John, the whole idea of Rogue One started with you. How long back had you been thinking of this idea before it was greenlit?]

“I started thinking about this all the way back on Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith. I was on set when we were shooting in Sydney, and I think we were waiting for some set-up to happen. I started chatting to Rick McCallum who was producing the film, and he mentioned that he and George Lucas were developing a Star Wars live-action TV series, and that they were working on scripts. I started thinking about all of the interesting tales you could tell in a show like that, and one of the first things that popped into my head was “well, what about a Mission: Impossible-style operation to break into the most secure facility that the Galactic Empire had to steal the plans for the Death Star?” I started toying with that idea, along with a few others, and I approached Rick again to learn more about the time period they wanted to set the show in, and I realized that none of my ideas would apply to that period, so I shelved it.”

-John Knoll, ILM.com Interview, December 18, 2021 (link)

“14 years ago today was my first day at Lucasfilm working under George Lucas, Rick McCallum, and Kathryn Ramos.”

-Phil Szostak, Twitter February 7, 2022 (link)

[who had the idea of turning the Jedi Temple into the Imperial Palace? I mean not in-universe.]

“It came from George Lucas's early development work on a crime-focused live action series based on Coruscant.”

-Pablo Hidalgo, Twitter, February 10, 2022 (link)

“        Today, the only details we know about Underworld come from old interviews by Lucas and members of the writing and producing team, many of which are no longer even online. There’s also a mysterious clip of test footage (featured above) and behind-the-scenes material (featured below) that circulated widely years after the show was abandoned.

...

Underworld was too far ahead of its time. Too expensive to bring to screens. But too intriguing to forget completely.

“I think part of the reason there was a reluctance to even ever think of Star Wars on television is we have to create everything,” Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy tells Vanity Fair in a new interview. “Nothing exists. We can’t walk down the street of New York City and start filming. We have to create the world. It’s constant world-building. Every ship, every speeder bike, every bit of costuming, everything has to be created. So it’s a huge expense.”

That, she said, is what held back Underworld when Lucas began trying in the late 2000s. Impossible is the word she uses. “Impossible to make that.”

Kennedy only took over as head of Lucasfilm in 2012, just as Lucas reached a deal to sell the company to Disney. But she has known and worked with him for most of her adult life, starting with Raiders of the Lost Ark. Many of the hard lessons Lucas learned on Underworld helped guide  the development of the current slate of Star Wars programs. “I think he knew that he was experimenting in the development/writing stage and hadn’t ever looked at whether or not it could be produced,” Kennedy says.

One of the writers on Underworld, Ronald D. Moore, now best known for Outlander and his reboot of Battlestar Galactica, told Inverse in 2017 that Lucas was trying to forge big ideas first, then figure out a way to bring them to fruition at the smaller cost required for an episode of television. “His mandate on the scripts were: ‘Think big. Don’t have any worries. We’ll make it. Budget is no object,’” Moore said. “So we wrote these gigantic pieces.”

But the budget did turn out to be an object. And Underworld slammed into it at full speed.

Imagine an hour’s episode with more digital animation and more visual effects, and more complicated in terms of set design and costume design than a two-hour movie that takes us three years to make, and we have to do that every week. And we only have $5 million to do it. That’s our challenge.” This was Rick McCallum, Lucas’s producer on the prequels, laying out the budget difficulties for Underworld in a January 2012 interview with Collider.

By the time he said those words, the show had already been mothballed, although McCallum kept open the possibility it might return. Barely. “It’s not a challenge that I think can be dealt with in the next year or two years,” he said. “I think it’s gonna be a little bit more longer-term goal.”

Kennedy now says Lucas put the show on hold “the minute he realized no one would ever step up and spend the money required to do something like that.” The problem was creating vast, otherworldly settings without actually sending the crew anywhere or literally building a futuristic world. The settings had to be done inexpensively but believably. The show had to be cheap without looking cheap.

The test footage was crafted by the postproduction company Stargate Studios, which first made it public in 2011. Then it was rediscovered and circulated on social media nearly a decade later, turning into a phenomenon in 2020. It shows a Rebel spy fleeing from some Stormtroopers through a neon-lit urban setting full of hovering vehicles, alien beings, and shuffling droids. It’s only about five minutes long, followed by another video showing the clip’s behind-the-scenes creation. Almost none of what viewers see onscreen really exists, except for a handful of primary actors and the props and sets they touch.

Sam Nicholson, the founder and CEO of Stargate Studios, tells Vanity Fair it was a “groundbreaking test” for the company at the time. “The creative direction was to make it darker and grittier than the original film, using all virtual sets. We composited everything in real time on a green screen set,” he says. “The Star Wars fan club showed up as Stormtroopers, and Lucasfilm gave us all the wardrobe and cut us loose to create anything we wanted to prove the production technique.”

He said the short was created in two days in 2010. The dialogue, as it turns out, was written and added after the fact once Lucasfilm liked the way the visuals turned out. Skywalker Sound technicians wove in spoken words that were recorded separately, then they added music and sound effects from the company audio library. “It’s the only film I’ve ever shot and directed first, then wrote a script to fit the picture after we wrapped,” Nicholson says.

It was an impressive test, as the craze around it a decade later would prove. But could it be replicated repeatedly on a vast scale? Making a proof of concept short was one thing; doing it for a full hour, dozens of times a year for multiple seasons, was simply too complicated and expensive at the time.

In 2007 and 2008, VFX supervisor Richard Bluff collaborated closely with Lucas on Underworld as Industrial Light & Magic’s chief of virtual landscapes. The cost-saving tech they needed simply wasn’t possible then, no matter how much they pushed it forward. “I’d worked on Revenge of the Sith, the last Star Wars movie he did, and I knew then, working in the digital matte departments, what the tools and the techniques were to create these environments,” Bluff tells Vanity Fair. “A few years later, working on this TV show with George, they were largely the same tools. And there really wasn’t that breakthrough that he was looking for—beyond squeezing the time.”

It would take about another decade before ILM would develop StageCraft, the vast digital wall that essentially turns simulated backdrops into photorealistic location shoots—all without having to leave the comfort of a Manhattan Beach soundstage. Today, Bluff helps lead the VFX department on The Mandalorian, and he was one of the key people who brought that technology to life. Its advent came just in time for that Disney+ show, but too late to save Underworld.

“When George came down to Manhattan Beach and looked at what we were doing, he was like, ‘Oh, this is what I wanted to do,’” Kennedy says.

What was Underworld actually about? The test footage doesn’t answer that; it was just a brief experiment to show the technology. It wasn’t directly created by Lucas and didn’t utilize any of the scripts for the show. Some details of Underworld’s intended story did emerge during the development phase, but even those are vague.

Within the Star Wars chronology, Underworld was set after the events of Revenge of the Sith, with the Empire domineering the galaxy from the capital world of Coruscant, which features prominently in the prequel films. The elite and powerful exist on the surface of what is essentially a planet-size city, but the working class, the poor, and the desperate exist in the layers below. That’s where the series would focus its attention. Hence the name: Underworld.

...

When Lucas realized the show might never happen, he began weaving his favorite story points into the animated show so that they would make it to viewers in some way. “There’s a lot of evidence of it in what we did in Clone Wars,” says Dave Filoni, who helped create that show with Lucas and now is executive producer of The Mandalorian and a key Lucasfilm creative executive. “There were basically some of the big set pieces, like the big transportation tube from the surface of Coruscant to the underworld was a main feature in the live-action series. We recreated it very faithfully to what George wanted it to be for Clone Wars.”

Underworld also would have focused on the criminals who thrived in a time of tyranny, operating on the fringes of war, oppression, and destruction. The masked alien gangsters known as the Pyke Syndicate were central to its story. They would later be featured prominently in the animated stories and the stand-alone film Solo before becoming the primary foes in the recent Disney+ series The Book of Boba Fett. “You’ve got this broadening of criminal syndicates and underworld elements that I think still affects Star Wars to this day,” Filoni says. “The Pykes are the ones that we played with the most. There were other criminal underlings and families and crime lords that George had come up with.”

Lucas told TV Guide he had thus far worked on 40 episodes, and even today the contents of those stories remain under wraps. Lucasfilm declined to share any concept materials or scripts from Underworld. Filoni wasn’t directly involved in that show, but was familiar with it because of his concurrent work on The Clone Wars. Underworld will probably never be resurrected; but that doesn’t mean its story isn’t still alive in other ways.

“It’s something we’re very precious with at Lucasfilm because it represents this big piece of work that George did before he basically left Star Wars,” Filoni says. “We’re constantly poring over it because, to me, even though it remains unproduced, the ideas in it are what makes it so valuable. The ideas are real and true to Star Wars because it’s created by George.”

Lucas himself was fond of digging into his own archive and salvaging unused ideas from the original Star Wars movies. Now Underworld is part of that tradition.

“We’ve taken designs over the years that were done in ’77, and George would pull them out for Clone Wars and say, ‘Well, I always liked this. We should figure out a place for this,’” Filoni says. “I think in time, you’ll find with Star Wars that there’s a place for everything. We just have to find it.”        ”

-Anthony Breznican, Vanity Fair “Star Wars: Underworld—The Galactic TV Show That Almost Was” Article, May 4, 2022 (link)

[responding to a Star Wars Continuity post about Kessel’s verdant side and King Yaruba showing up in TCW S7 after being mentioned in the Solo VG]

“This was a long time coming. King Yaruba of Kessel has been floating in George Lucas-originated material since 2009 or so, waiting for a place to surface.”

[So were the Pykes, right?]

“Yep. And Oba Diah.”

-Pablo Hidalgo, Twitter, May 31, 2022 (link)

[discussing the use of swearing in Andor]

“If the Underworld scripts ever got out, y’all would be blushing!  ☺️”

-Pablo Hidalgo, Twitter, September 23, 2022 (link)

[discussing the feasibility of a Star Wars TV show]

Interviewer: And there’s a history there. I mean there was even a live-action Star Wars show that George Lucas himself was once gonna possibly do. And it was scripted out, or at least they had a bible to my knowledge...

Gilroy: Yeah, no, I know.

Interviewer: ...and it was abandoned. Because it was just too expensive.

Gilroy: Yeah, and then they tried to turn it into a game... yeah the 13... what’s it? 1369 or what’s it called? Yeah.

-Tony Gilroy, Q&A Podcast Interview, September 29, 2022 (link)

Interviewer: The shot of Syril going home on Coruscant, when he gets in an elevator and it goes down — that felt like such a perfect representation of the show, and so unlike what we’re used to seeing on “Star Wars.”

Gilroy: That is Coruscant. Coruscant goes down. George Lucas worked on a project for a decade that was lower Coruscant. I think it was a film and a series and they tried to do a video game. I don’t know the whole story of it, but there’s an incredible amount of work that went into lower Coruscant. It goes down.

-Tony Gilroy, Variety Interview, November 10, 2022 (link)

“This is never an easy answer since everyone has a different definition of canon, but my opinion is the true Star Wars canon by George Lucas is his six movies and The Clone Wars. Everything else is… something else. Which is fine.”

[Q: Would you say the unproduced scripts for the underworld series that (correct me if I’m wrong) were written under Lucas’s supervision could be part of that canon?]

“Some concepts and broad strokes, sure, and these have been preserved, but the scripts themselves are very work-in-progress”

-Pablo Hidalgo, Twitter, March 25, 2023 (link)

[Q: Were not scripts pertaining to Star Wars Underworld primed to contravene the origin of the Rebel Alliance as presented in The Force Unleashed Multimedia Project? I swear I recall you asserting this beforehand, somewhere. Essentially, it would've also been "T-Canon".]

“Yeah, it went a different path and introduced Saw Gerrera as a very important component. And the T was bookkeeping to tell us it originated from a TV project but it was functionally the same as anything G because of who ran those shows.”

-Pablo Hidalgo, Twitter, September 20, 2023 (link)

[Afaik the idea that kyber would end up being used in the Death Star was highly implied in the unfinished Crystal Crisis arc of TCW]

“Yeah, it was a George Lucas idea from live action TV development from around 2008 that ended up (almost) surfacing in The Clone Wars first. Just like Saw Gerrera.”

-Pablo Hidalgo, Twitter, November 12, 2023 (link)

[Discussing K2 being rendered in real-time with Unreal in a particular shot of Rogue One]

“As always, George Lucas envisioned this years before it was feasible. He had imagined a future where game and production assets and methodology would be interchangeable. Projects like The Clone Wars previs and The Force Unleashed materials and physics engines probed this.”

[Wasn't that part of the sales pitch for Star Wars Underworld too? Granted, i don't know how much you can talk about it.]

“Not so much the sales pitch, but what had to happen before that show could even be remotely possible to shoot as intended. Even today, I think it's beyond the scope of what's possible.”

[Fascinating. Not sure if I remember correctly, did the Underworld work lead to the development of the Pykes?]

“Some of the things have surfaced in The Clone Wars. Pykes. Saw Gerrera. The Coruscant underworld police. Level 1313 itself shows up as early as Season 2 of Clone Wars!

-Pablo Hidalgo, Twitter, December 5, 2023 (link)

[Referring to Episode III concept art by Erik Tiemens]

“These would become the Lurmen in The Clone Wars S1. They were gonna be on Mygeeto at one point in Ep III’s development. An offshoot of the Lurmen was going to be appear in early live action TV development too.”

-Pablo Hidalgo, Twitter, December 18, 2023 (link)

Katee: You know Ron Moore is rumored to have been up for writing a Star Wars project at some point, right?

Sam: Oh yeah. I ran into him at the Ranch years ago. ... But no he was writing the first attempt at a Star Wars television series which was never produced. And I bumped into him at the Ranch at the time. I remember sitting, we were all sitting there...

Katee: Was this after Battlestar?

Sam: This was after Battlestar. And I was doing a video game called Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. ... And so I’m sitting there, drinking wine with the cast and I’m having this nice little moment, and I keep glancing over at the corner and I’m like, that bearded guy looks kinda like a young George Lucas, but looks more like my old boss Ron Moore.

[...]

Sam: So he was there and I went over and “What are you doing here?” “Oh, I’m writing the Star Wars TV series.” Like “What?”

-Sam Witwer, “Blah Blah Blah with Katee Sackhoff” Podcast, January 9, 2024 (link)

[weren't their elements being funneled into TCW from Star Wars Underworld. The Pyke Syndicate, all aspects of the Coruscant Underworld such as the LAAT/le. You mentioned this was occurring since Season Two? I've always wanted clarification on that.]

“Yes, both series were in concurrent development, with the live action getting only as far as script and concept art. But many concepts crossed over, with Ahsoka and Plo Koon actually visiting Level 1313 as early as season 2.”

-Pablo Hidalgo, Twitter, March 22, 2024 (link)

[Asked about retiring from Lucasfilm after George retired]

I would have only stayed if he was gonna continue to direct. And that was not going to happen. We had spent five years trying to create -- we’d come up with fifty episodes for a Star Wars TV series, called the Underworld. Which was dark, sexy, amazing, nothing to do with the films whatsoever. But the problem was, each episode, hour long episode, was bigger than any of the films. And we just could never get the budget down to a place where you could make a TV that could go on for five years. So that was a blow to us. [...]

It was just expensive, like forty million dollars an episode. Each one had more effects than the film did!

-Rick McCallum, Be tv, June 16, 2024 (link)

“I can say there was a period where people thought we weren't doing anything. And we spent five years doing... I’m probably wrong about this but I think we had over 60 scripts. Third-draft scripts. Again, the most wonderful writers in the world on it. And again, we created exactly the same experience for everybody at the Ranch, and again just a phenomenal group of talent. And these were dark. They were sexy, they were violent, they were just absolutely wonderful. Wonderful, complicated, challenging. I mean, it would have blown up the whole Star Wars universe and Disney definitely would have never offered George to buy that. [laughs] But, I mean, it’s one of the great disappointments of our life. But the problem was each episode was bigger than the films, so the lowest I could get it down to with the technology that existed then was about 40 million an episode.

-Rick McCallum, Young Indy Chroniclers podcast, February 27, 2025 (link)

So we went to... Chris Albrecht [who ran HBO] and he bought into it. He thought if we could get a European partner, let’s do this. And he was coming to see -- he had a conference or something in Vegas -- and he was coming to see us on Monday at the Ranch to discuss it. Cuz we thought, okay, well, there’s another Indiana Jones film we might be able to give him, we might be able to... there was little carrots and sticks that were involved in this, that we thought okay, he might just go for 40 million an episode. Or if he doesn’t, and we can’t find a partner, if we gave him something else, could we -- we didn’t know what it was, but, maybe another Star Wars film, y’know, anything. At least we’d tell him that. [laughs]

Anyway, he was all scheduled to come in, I think at 10 or 11 o’clock on the same flight from Vegas straight to the Ranch, and he got caught up in some bizarre scandal where he was filmed with his girlfriend and everything else. And it turned into a kind of major scandal and HBO let him go. The night before he was coming to see us. And of course we waited for the fallout to happen and went straight to the new people Warner Brothers had put in at HBO. And they had no -- they weren’t gonna do anything expensive anymore. They were gonna do small films, they just -- no desire to even meet with us. And there was no other place you could go to. Apple didn’t, Amazon, even Netflix wasn’t around.

Disney owns those scripts so they’ll never be made.

[“But will they ever be published?”]

No, we can’t even publish them.

-Rick McCallum, Young Indy Chroniclers podcast, February 27, 2025 (link)

[About Ron Moore’s work on the show]

“And I’ll tell you, that guy. What an incredible talent. I was desperate to try to make him the showrunner of the thing because George -- we had so much other stuff to do. But George wanted to hold on. But he was definitely one of the lead -- he was the lead writer of Underworld.  

-Rick McCallum, Young Indy Chroniclers podcast, February 27, 2025 (link)

[On if he has a copy of the scripts]

“I do! But here’s the problem, we’re not allowed to have them. Not allowed to have them, show them, do anything.”

-Rick McCallum, Young Indy Chroniclers podcast, February 27, 2025 (link)

[Interviewer asks if Underworld in part developed by George to sweeten the pot for a sale of the company, and also brings up issues with getting the soundstage built]

“It was just insane. I’ll give you a brief idea. Cuz this is the great thing about George, he always has a plan that’s brewing in his head. So when you talked about the archives and everything, well the archives now is the new Lucas Museum. That’s where the archives will -- of Star Wars, and Indiana Jones, and anything.”

-Rick McCallum, Young Indy Chroniclers podcast, February 27, 2025 (link)

“Katee Sackhoff: Did you write a Star Wars script?

Ronald D. Moore: Back, you mean, eventually?

KS: No, I mean, like, didn't... Rumor has it that you were developing Star Wars at some point.

RM: Oh, oh, oh, right, right, right. Yeah.

KS: What happened to that?

RM: Yes, there was a point in... Galactica was winding down, Caprica was starting right around that period. I got a call that George Lucas wants to meet with you about a possible series. “What? Huh? Sure.”

KS: Just for the meeting.

RM: Just for the meeting. I'm there. So, meet with George. He's very nice and his producer Rick McCallum. And turned out they, at that point, George wanted to do a live-action Star Wars TV series. And this is after, you know, he had done the prequels clearly before any other movies and stuff. And it was like, wow. And what he wanted to do is, he wanted to gather a group of writers together, kind of an international group of writers. So, I was one of the Americans and there were some from the UK and from Australia and New Zealand and, you know. And he would bring us together up at Skywalker Ranch for like a like a long weekend.

[...]

RM: It's amazing. So yeah, we would go for these long weekends, or a week or something at a time, sit with George in a conference room at the Skywalker Ranch and break these stories. And then we would go off for like another six weeks up by ourselves, write the scripts, then regather, talk about notes, do another group of scripts.

And this went on for like a year or two or something. We would just gather, break up, gather, break up. And the writers would kind of change. Not everybody could go to every session. New people came in, came out. I didn't go to all the sessions. And we wrote something like, I think 48 or 50 episodes. Oh yeah, there's like 48 or at least, it's definitely in the 40s. I think 48 or 50 scripts for this series.

And when we got to that point, George said, okay, that's enough. And then he wanted to just take those scripts and then he was just gonna go shoot them on his dime, which is kind of what he had done with Clone Wars, the TV show. Like he was just gonna produce this series.

And in George's mind, it was -- once I've produced it, I'm just gonna then take it to a network and go, “Take it or leave it. This is what it is. I don't care what your notes are. I don't care what your thoughts are. It is done. Do you want it?” And they would have no choice, but just to say, “Uh, yes, Mr. Lucas. Here's your check.”

That's where we left it with him. And he went off and I think he did shoot some, they shot some test footage because he was -- George Loves technology and he was exploring different things of CGI and what became the Volume and all that stuff was percolating at ILM. Shot some test stuff for some scenes, but not too long after that -- like another year maybe goes by -- and he sold the whole thing kit and kaboodle to Disney, all Lucasfilm. And so the project never happened, but that's what happened. I wrote, I think, two of those scripts.

KS: Really?

RM: Yeah, it was amazing. It was an amazing -- sitting in a room with George Lucas and arguing about Star Wars.

KS: Arguing about Star Wars?

RM: Oh yeah, because as a writer, at a certain point, you get over your awe and now you're just in a writer's room and he's telling you something about Darth Vader that doesn't make sense. You go, “I don't think that's really who Darth Vader is. Let me tell you about Darth Vader. He's actually...” and Goerge goes, “Well, you know, I don't think that's -- Darth Vader.” “Yeah, but George, this, he wouldn't do this.”

You're just like, what am I doing? Where am I? Yeah, you just kind of forget and now you're just in a story conference having an argument.”

-Ronald D. Moore, The Sackhoff Show, March 11, 2025 (link)

The Legacy of Underworld:

Ideas that have ended up in other media

(Including 1313 ideas)

Star Wars: The Clone Wars

• Depiction of Coruscant underworld and its levels, police guards, etc
• Saw Gerrera and his rebel tendencies; set-up for his future in the Alliance
• Level 1313
• Republic police gunship concept and design
• 79’s clone bar
• The Pykes and their connection to Coruscant crime families.
• C-21 Highsinger the bounty hunter droid
• Kyber crystals being used to power the Death Star (implied by the Crystal Crisis arc)
• (Possibly) The backstory for Boba Fett and his rise to becoming a feared bounty hunter
• (Possibly) Boba Fett having a crew of bounty hunter allies (including Highsinger)
• (Possibly) The structure of the Hutt families.
• (Possibly) The planet Scipio (certainly originated in 1313 at the very least)

Star Wars Rebels

• There are multiple rebel cells in the galaxy which all group together to form the Alliance
• Clones being phased out of service
• The depiction of Empire Day
• The design and details of Kessel (seemingly from late Clone Wars work as well, but given the Pike connection may have started with Underworld/1313)
• Rang Clan is mentioned (was mentioned in preview for 1313, and we know those gangs were taken from Underworld)

Star Wars: Tarkin

• Palpatine’s first name is Sheev
• The Jedi Temple has been converted into the Imperial Palace
• Mas Amedda is the Grand Vizier of the Empire
• Darth Vader secretly deals with a crime syndicate in the Coruscant underworld called the Crymorah syndicate
• The Droid Gotra, a collection of repurposed battle droids that were not deactivated at the end of the war. The group is controlled by the Crymorah.
• Separatist holdouts exist and still have influence

Star Wars: Darth Vader

• More of the new Imperial Palace
• Mention of the Crymorah

Ultimate Star Wars

• Jabba is aligned with the Crymorah. This fact is reiterated in the 2016 Character Encyclopedia

Star Wars: Dark Disciple

• Rang Clan appears (see note in Rebels above)

Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens

• The Church of the Force, comprised of non-force-sensitives who want to follow the religion during the dark times (Lor San Tekka and details from the Visual Dictionary)

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

• Began as a pitch for the live-action series by John Knoll
• Saw Gerrera leads a small group of extreme rebels, the Partisans
• Kyber crystals being used to power the Death Star
• In 13 BBY, The Church of the Force is growing in the shadows on Coruscant (from the Visual Guide, and a clear reference to Underworld)

Star Wars: Thrawn

• There is major unrest and crime on the lower levels of Coruscant (p. 214)

Solo: A Star Wars Story

• Han Solo and Chewbacca’s first meeting is depicted
• Lando losing the Millennium Falcon to Han Solo is depicted
• Low-down citizens using an astromech unit like a trash can for a fire (see here)
• Details about the Pykes and spice
• Details about Kessel
• (Possibly) The “five crime syndicates” idea

Star Wars: Most Wanted

• According to Tsuulo, the fact that “The Droid Gotra are a bunch of terrorists” is something “everyone on Coruscant knows.”

Smuggler’s Guide

Scum and Villainy

• The police reports in this book deal heavily with the Coruscant underworld, including policemen, gunships, and other elements that came from Underworld. Given that Hidalgo is aware of that material, we can assume those reports contain pieces of that lore.

Star Wars Episode IX

• The original “Duel of the Fates” version of the script featured Coruscant, the Sith temple under the Jedi Temple, and citizens of the underworld rising up against the First Order. See concept art and leaked script.

The Mandalorian

• The Droid Gotra seems to get a reference in “Chapter 9: The Marshal”

The High Republic

• As seen in this article about High Republic ships and vehicles, a design for a Pyke Syndicate ship was re-used as a Nihil ship design. The Pyke ship design likely originates from Underworld.

Star Wars Encyclopedia (French / Published by Altaya)

• Translated from French: Jabba’s collaboration with the Crymorah Union was well known, and allowed the Hutt to obtain a position in the Hutt Grand Council. He controlled his criminal empire from his palace in the Dune Sea, in northern Tatooine.

• (Thanks to @NumidianPrime and @NuteGunray3 for catching this!)

The Bad Batch

• Vanguard Axis, initially from the Season 2 episode “Tribe,” is confirmed in the Dawn of Rebellion Visual Guide to be an offshoot of the Droid Gotra

Andor

• The Grand Vizier (Mas Amedda) gets a mention.
• In Episode 10 “One Way Out” we finally get a full-blown look at the Coruscant underworld, looking quite similar to the test footage for Underworld!

Jedi Survivor

• The Imperial Palace in the design of the Jedi Temple is depicted
• Much of the Coruscant underworld as seen on Level 2046 is clearly inspired by the concept art for 1313

Dawn of Rebellion: The Visual Guide

• The Crymorah is described as “the most secretive of the five syndicates, situated in the heart of the galaxy” And it, like the larger criminal underworld, is made up of five families: The Rang Clan, the Wandering Star, the Droid Gotra, the Baldamiro Family, and envoys of the Hutts. This explains the “crime families” often referred to in reference to Underworld and 1313.

Reign of the Empire: The Mask of Fear

• Mon Mothma meets with a representative of the Crymorah on a moon of Coruscant, who is concerned that the Empire may crack down on them. We know this is what the Darth Vader plotline would have been, and that having happened is alluded to in Tarkin.

Tales of the Underworld

• The second of the Ventress episodes features Highsinger, who would have featured in 1313, and is written by Matt Michnovetz, who was a writer on that game

The 1313 Connection

As established in some of the quotes above, 1313 was going to be tied to the live action series. In this section, we will discuss what we know of the game. This information will be what we know about the game, even if it is not confirmed to die directly to the television show. That material is reserved for the sections above. Here we pool information about the game itself, information which may or may not be connected to the TV series. Given how the quotes from those in the know make the two projects seem very closely connected, it’s fair to say much of this content directly relates to the series.

Demo Information:

copied here for posterity

http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/09/25/star-wars-1313-boba-fett-concept-art-and-story-details

“Following the shutdown of LucasArts, an important piece of information came to light about Star Wars 1313: Boba Fett would have been the star. Replacing the placeholder character shown at E3 and Star Wars Celebration, the infamous bounty hunter would have taken center stage in 1313, on a mission through the seedy underbelly of the multilayered planet of Coruscant.

Recently, a source showed IGN a 15 minute demo of 1313 that would have debuted at this year's E3. While footage in the demo was still in development and much of it was still using incomplete assets, it was the most extensive look at 1313 we've ever seen, and all of it included Boba Fett in action.

We can’t show you that full demo just yet, but we can tell you how it played out and what the game was about, plus reveal new pieces of concept art that give us the best glimpse yet at how Star Wars 1313 evolved before its cancellation.

Star Wars 1313 would have begun with a prologue on Tattooine. Various bounty hunters seen in the game would have worked for different crime bosses, and Boba Fett unsurprisingly served Jabba the Hutt. Here we see a young Fett very early in the game, long before he even has his Mandalorian armor, instead wearing only his most basic outfit.

As you can see in the art above, Fett is standing in front of the Slave One and still wearing his father's iconic helmet. Since Star Wars 1313 was meant to take place between the prequel and original Star Wars trilogies, Fett’s armor would have evolved throughout the story, changing and becoming stronger, more familiar, as he progressed.

Coruscant was meticulously detailed, with structures seen here made up of derelict ships and spare parts (including TIE Fighter wings if you look closely). It’s not hard to make out a Corellian freighter here (though our source assured us it isn’t the Millennium Falcon), and you can see the gigantic scale of the environments the development team intended.

Our source explained that at one point in the story, Fett would also end up in layer 1314. While 1313 is a corrupt metropolis controlled by crime families, 1314 is a rarely-explored slum that has been shrouded for years in complete darkness. Part of the story of Star Wars 1313 would have seen Fett fighting his way through layer 1314 in search of his bounty.

Here you can see Boba Fett fighting an enemy in what may be 1314, though our source didn't confirm. The enemy wears a mask that presumably helps it see in the constant dark in this layer of Coruscant.

The armor here is also an example of the aforementioned upgrades Fett would have received; he’s now equipped with a jetpack and his more traditional Mandalorian armor.

Star Wars 1313, as suggested by the E3 trailer, featured a ton of huge action set pieces and Uncharted-like platforming. The shot seen here is straight from the 15-minute demo we saw, with Fett hanging from a drain pipe. As he’s climbing, the pipe bursts, falling downward and forcing Fett to find a new place to grip. Our source tells us these scripted sequences would have been common, and the E3 trailer is a great indication of some of the high-tension moments we might have seen in the finished product.

The main thrust of our demo saw Boba Fett chasing a Trandoshan through a sprawling marketplace in level 1313. As Fett chased after his target, he ran through several storefronts, including a sort of butcher shop that featured sliced-open Tauntauns hanging from the rafters. The crime families of 1313 were using these Tauntauns to smuggle spice to other planets, a plot point that our source tells us would have been central to Star Wars 1313’s story.

Here we see the end of the chase in our demo, after Fett has caught and captured the Trandoshan in question. You can see that, rather than killing his prey, Fett has him cuffed and is prepared to bring him in alive to Jabba or the rest of the crime family leaders.

Behind Fett is a droid companion that would have fought alongside him as his partner. We’re told that this droid would eventually have betrayed Fett, but that early in the game they fought side-by-side.

Fett is once again fighting alongside his droid companion, seen here burning enemies, still wearing some of his more advanced armor.

While our source didn’t confirm exactly when in the game this shot might have taken place, it’s possible that this is a further battle in the newly-opened level 1314.

This shot shows us the other bounty hunters fighting on behalf of the various crime families of 1313, all working together toward a common goal (though, as is typical of Star Wars lore, all bets are off once that goal has been completed). This was meant to tie into the live-action TV series, our source tells us, which was set on Coruscant and focused on the same crime families as the game.

Behind Fett we once again see his droid companion, as well as what appears to be a Dathomirian, a human, and a Twi’lek.

Star Wars 1313 was an ambitious, beautiful project, and while we’ll likely never see it completed, it’s certainly fascinating getting a glimpse into what LucasArts intended.”

Videos and Trailers:

IGN Demo and Interview

“Welcome to Level 1313” Trailer

“Descent into the Underworld” BTS Video

Complete Game Demo

Animation Test

(Apparently) the Main Theme for 1313

Container Fight/Into the Portal Music

Boba Fett Gameplay

Press:

Entertainment Weekly Preview

Additional Concept art:

Other/Misc:

(Things that don’t fit elsewhere /

aren’t confirmed to be related to the series)

Additional 1313 art:

https://web.archive.org/web/20190501181321/http://thevaultproject.bplaced.net/c/non-dev/1313

https://web.archive.org/web/20190425050044/http://thevaultproject.bplaced.net/c/dev/1313

Art for a Trandoshan character:

https://twitter.com/PhilSzostak/status/1235636413548212225

Dave Hobbins (concept artist for the series):

Website and Blog

His site lists his work on Underworld as:

“Star Wars: Underworld [Live Action TV Series] | DIR: George Lucas | CDS: Erik Tiemens | JAK Films Inc./Lucasfilm Ltd.

- Concept Designer”

And on his LinkedIn he is listed as having been a Concept Artist for the series from November 2006 to December 2008

Phil Szostack’s Linkedin History at Lucasfilm:

JAK Films, Inc. Art Department Coordinator

Feb 2008 - Aug 2011

Continuity/Narrative Designer for Star Wars 1313

Aug 2011 - Apr 2013

Phil Szostack’s Bio from Mando S1 Art Book Description:

Lucasfilm creative art manager Phil Szostak has worked in conjunction with Star Wars art departments since 2008. A graduate of the School of Visual Arts in New York, Szostak ran the JAK Films Art Department on Skywalker Ranch for more than three years before joining the narrative design team on LucasArts’s Star Wars: 1313. He is also the author of The Art of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (Abrams, 2019) and The Art of Star Wars: The Last Jedi (Abrams, 2017).

From Sam Witwer in the RebelForce Radio A New Hope Commentary on George’s information for The Force Unleashed: (possible this came from ideas he had for Underworld)

• After Order 66, Jedi survivors were few. Many scattered across the galaxy into hiding, while a few became bounty hunters. As time went on, those Jedi who did not continue using the Force slowly lost their strong connection with it. To keep a low profile, they mostly stayed away from much use of the Force. Like Rahm Kota, they may have cut themselves off from the Force.

“When developing story details for the events that happen between Episodes III and IV, George Lucas intimated that Vader and the Emperor likely sought out apprentices of their own in that 19-year gap. They’re like cheating spouses -- Sidious and Vader were both looking for a better catch behind the other’s back. In true Sith fashion, they looked for candidates they could recruit to overthrow the other. How successful they were in their searches has yet to be told”

-Pablo Hidalgo, “Ask the Master” Column, Star Wars Insider 82 May 17, 2007

(I think this is likely referring to Force Unleashed early development, but it could partially apply to the series)

Acknowledgements

After having followed news about the live-action series for years, I created this document in mid-2016 when we were getting more and more information about how elements popping up in modern Star Wars media, like Saw Gerrera, had originated in Underworld. In early 2020, I felt the document had been built up enough to share it on the internet. I’m glad it’s been a helpful resource for fans, since the whole point of it originally was just to help me keep track of all the information that was out there and get it all properly sourced. Getting the document to this state would not have been possible without contributions from other fans.

Thank you to Marv / NumidianPrime for helping me with some research and helping to fill out the quote database so that this document was ready to be shared more widely. And thank you for being the Crymorah Watchman and always being on the lookout for Underworld connections! Thank you also to the members of the StarWarsReference Discord who also gave some feedback and did some investigating of Underworld details back when this document was first released.

I need to thank Wookieepedia and all the editors who collected and curated sources related to Underworld over the years; tracking down every source in that article was a huge help to build this document up. And thank you to reddit user u/xezene for giving this document a shout-out in a post and finding a few quotes I wasn’t aware of!

Finally, thank you to all the journalists and interviewers over the years who have continued to ask for more details about this show, and for the older information, thank you to the great Internet Archive, without which many of the most important bits of research would be lost to time.