When Disney bought Lucasfilm, the company abandoned plans for two major projects— Star Wars: Underworld, a live-action TV show, and the video game Star Wars 1313, both of which would’ve followed the seedy underworld of Coruscant. We all thought they were dead and buried, never to return. But that may not be the case after all…
/Film via Squareeyed got speaking to Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy over the weekend at a Star Wars: The Force Awakens press event and both projects became part of their discussion. Peter Sciretta from /Film documents what Kennedy told him below:
“I talked to Lucasfilm head Kathleen Kennedy over the weekend at the Star Wars: The Force Awakens press junket. During my chat I learned that the company is still spending a lot of time looking, discussing and developing two of the most notorious left-over projects from the George Lucas era: the live-action Star Wars TV show Star Wars: Underworld and the Star Wars 1313 video game. Could either of these thought to have been abandoned projects find new light in the Disney era?
“During my conversation with Kathy, I wondered out loud what happened to the live-action Star Wars television series that George Lucas was developing. Lucas had been developing the series, which had the working title Star Wars: Underworld, for many years. Lucas had hoped to do 400 episodes of the show, and reportedly even had 100 episodes fully-written. From what I’ve heard, Lucas had hoped to film the television series in between making new Star Wars films in a new super high-tech studio he was hoping to build in Marin County. When his rich neighbors made it too difficult for him to build that state-of-the-art studio, George Lucas pulled the ultimate “f**k you” and announced he would instead build affordable housing on the land. Of course, that’s the rumored story.
“The Star Wars: Underworld TV series was announced at 2005’s Celebration III, and was to be set in the Coruscant underworld during the timespan between Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith and Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope. Lucas compared the series toEpisode IV, saying that it would be “funny and there’s action.” But instead of being based on the action-adventure films of the 1930s, it would be based more on the film noir films from the 1940s and in a sense be more talky and be filled with more “personal dramas.” Described as being “much darker, grittier” and “more character-based,” it was compared by prequels producer Rick McCallum to The Godfather, who also described it as “Deadwood in space” and “Empire on steroids”.
And on the subject of 1313, Kennedy had this to say: “No. No, interestingly enough, thats 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….
“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.
Kennedy could mean a variety of things by saying that they plan to develop the projects. There has been plenty of rumours swirling around about Lucasfilm possibly developing a television series for Netflix. How glorious would that be!? Stay tuned as we press for more updates on this story.
Irwin Fletcher
I'm an LA journalist who really lives for his profession. I have also published work as Jane Doe in various mags and newspapers across the globe. I normally write articles that can cause trouble but now I write for FTN because Nerds are never angry, so I feel safe.
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