By Carol Pinchefsky, Source: Blastr.com
Attention Star Wars fans! (And that’s everybody, right?) The live-action television show we’ve talked about? As of now, it has a title (well, a working title). And it’s called …
… Star Wars: Underworld!
IGN interviewed producer and George Lucas’ right-hand man, Rick McCallum, who spoke about the direction the series will take:
“They take place between Episode III and Episode IV, that 20-year period when Luke is growing up. It’s not about Luke, but it’s about that period when the Empire is trying to take things [over].”
The characters are criminals and gangsters within a shady government. When the interviewer said the characters were akin to pyramid-schemer, Bernie Madoff, McCallum said, “Exactly.”
Lucas and crew are sitting on 50 one-hour scripts, each “bigger than any of the prequels were. … They’re complex, they’re dark, they’re adult.” But McCallum says they need to keep costs to $5 million an episode. And until the technology matures, Lucasfilm—and those lovely, lovely scripts—will wait.
McCallum also spoke about the delivery system of the show, that is, he doesn’t know exactly how it will air. Will it appear on network television or cable? If so, it means Lucasfilm may have to give up a certain amount of control of their work, and as we know, George isn’t big on compromise. Will it appear as a digital download? “iTunes isn’t the panacea that we thought it would be,” McCallum said. And Netflix, according to McCallum, doesn’t have enough viewers for them to recoup their costs.
Right now, Lucasfilm is taking a wait-and-see approach about Star Wars: Underworld.
And as that happens, we fans will also be waiting. We just hope that we’ll eventually be seeing.
