Fett in Star Wars TV?
Anything's possible for live-action series.

June 16, 2005 - With the upcoming Star Wars television series, set during the early days of the Empire, the possibilities are endless. One popular character that could make it into Lucas's new show is Boba Fett, who was played by young Daniel Logan in Attack of the Clones. According to USA Today, Logan (now 18 years old) was in the company of George Lucas and Harrison Ford at the 33rd Life Achievement Awards gala of the American Film Institute. Lucas himself apparently suggested, during the event, that Logan's character might be included in the series.


Since the live action Star Wars series is not expected to focus on any of the important characters in the films, Fett's part – if it materializes – could be an occasional recurring role, or even just a cameo appearance. On the other hand, it's possible that Lucas doesn't consider Fett to be an "important character."

Whatever Lucas has in mind, it'll be several months before a concrete storyline is laid out. TheForce.net recently reported on a radio interview with Star Wars producer Rick McCallum on the subject. McCallum stated that Lucas's team plans to take August off and start working on ideas for the television show in September.

The currently-untitled live-action Star Wars series is expected to begin airing in 2006. We'll be following the production closely.

Star Wars TV Update
You'll have to wait 'til 2008.
by Paul Davidson
July 28, 2005 - If a producer announced a new television series in 2005, you'd expect to see progress on it by 2006, or '07 at the latest, right? Unfortunately, not so with the two Star Wars television series that fans have been promised.



According to Can Mag, at least one of the two shows, the much-anticipated live action series, won't go into production until at least 2008. It seems that George Lucas intends to do much of the writing and directing work himself, but his calendar is full for the next few years with the planned 3-D versions of the Star Wars movies as well as the long-awaited new Indiana Jones movie. After that, he'll start working on the new live-action Star Wars television.

At this point, it looks like it will be another three or four years before we find out what Lucas's vision of the post-prequel era is. This delay may or may not apply to the computer-animated series that deals with the Clone Wars. Perhaps if that comes out in the next two years, it will keep the fans happy.

Keep your browser set to IGN FilmForce for the latest on the Star Wars TV series and other news from a galaxy far, far away.

During our recent visit to WonderCon, MovieWeb got to go one-on-one with head of Lucasfilm fan relations, Steve Sansweet, to talk about the company's plans for the upcoming Star Wars TV series in the works.

There were rumors that Kevin Smith would be attached to the Star Wars TV show. Today, he said no.

Steve Sansweet: I can say no too. Kevin's a huge Star Wars fan and it's great to have Kevin as a Star Wars partisan. He's been really nice to us, he mixed the sound of almost all his movies, including the new one, Clerks 2. So no, Kevin's a great guy, but he's not involved in any current Star Wars project. Maybe someday in the future?

Speaking of the future, you said the Star Wars TV show is years away...

Steve Sansweet: We're doing it in two phases. The first is Star Wars animation, which is CG 3-dimensional animation, like a Toy Story, that takes place during the period of the Clone Wars that takes place between Episodes 2 and 3. And that we're setting for Fall of 2007. Preproduction is underway, we're doing animation test, people are working on initial scripts. So we're well under way on that. And George is very much taking hand and is very much part of the whole process. I know some people thought maybe he would just hey "hey, go do it," but George is Star Wars and he's always gonna be very closely involved in this.

The other project is live action, and the live action is going to take place between Episode 3 and Episode 4. We're looking at a 1 hour show and [Producer] Rick McCallum has said the ideal would be to come up with 100 hours to really get into the story line and characters, and that's the direction we're going in. So that is really targeted more towards the end of the decade.

Speaking of characters, we hear it's not going to be the main characters...

Steve Sansweet: Correct. That's what George has said. For the most part, it's going to be characters you've seen a little of or seen some of, and they will be the central figures. But of course the plot lines will have to take into account what is happening in the rest of the galaxy, so you'll hear the names Luke and Han and Darth and things like that.

So we will have a core group of heros, it won't be episodic with a new hero each episode?

Steve Sansweet: I think there will probably be story arcs where we'll have some very familiar kinds of character continuity. Ya, I think you need to do that to do it like a movie. For most movies, not like Star Wars, but most movies where every movie you do it's a different group of characters. No I don't think that's what Star Wars fans want or expect.

This sounds like possibly one of the most ambitious televisions projects EVER. How is it going to happen?

Steve Sansweet: Somebody has to buy it first, you know what I mean? You can produce lots of TV and unless it's very compelling, nobody's going to want to put it on their channel. But there's so many channels of distribution. You turn around and every 6 months there's something new. There's ipod downloads, there's premium sites, there's through-the-telephone. You just don't know what's going to be here in a couple of years. In 3 years, what's going to be the hot new way of distributing? So I think that's always a possibility. Clearly you want to do something that's going to get to as many fans as possible that's as wide as possible.

Do you think it's possible to see failure with the foundation of the Star Wars universe, the merchandise, the movies, the DVD's.

Steve Sansweet: If you're always concerned with failure, you're never going to go out there and take any risk at all. Star Wars itself was a huge risk from the very beginning. Even Empire Strikes Back. As successful as Star Wars was, the bank that was lending George money to make the movie independently cut off his credit line. Nothing is a sure thing. I think there's every indication that we're going to do things that people are going to like and there's the sort of way you head.

Would it be too early to speculate on new villains? A new Grievous/Darth Maul type?

Steve Sansweet: I think in the Clone Wars animation, I think it's possible that we're going to see villains that we already know, like Grievous. I think it's way to early to speculate what's going to happen in the TV show. I think George has an idea of what he wants to do, where he wants to go with it, what kinds of characters he wants in it, but that's something...he's working on the animation right now...that he'll explore later.

How come Jar Jar didn't die in Episode 3???

Steve Sansweet: You shouldn't assume things... I'm not saying he did, but all kinds of things happened off screen in different areas of the universe. I didn't see him in the funeral procession for Padme. But you never know the future of Jar Jar, there's a lot of years to go into with Star Wars. You don't know what happened between 3 and 4. That's a 19 year period, lots of stuff can happen.

As for the new TV show: There's so much dynamic action in the movies, can that possibly be duplicated for a TV show?

Steve Sansweet: Ya, I really think you can do that in episodic TV now. It's interesting because a lot of the techniques that Geroge used in Episode 1, for example, were things that he developed in "The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles." Some of the special fx techniques of crowd, doubling, tripling, quadrupling the size. With computer animation and storage and rendering getting faster and faster, I think you'll be able to see some of the things you see in the movies be transfered to the TV. Look at some of the shows like Galactica and some of the other shows that have amazing special Fx."

Any idea on the music?

Steve Sansweet: Of course we used John Williams music in The Clone Wars, the cartoons on Cartoon Network. I don't know if any specific decision on that has been made.

3D Star wars, what can you tell us about that?

Steve Sansweet: Well, the technique exists. George and Rick McCallum are very excited about it, but you need to do a digital projection of the movie. That's how this system works. Look, there's like 90 screens in the US that have digital projections, the same number they had back in 1999, that's clearly not going to do it. You need at least 1,000 or a couple of thousand theaters in order to spend the kind of money it takes to convert the film to 3D. Late in 2005 and and this year, a lot of theaters are announcing that they are going to switch to digital projection. People have come up with a standard for the projection and they're coming up with schemes in order to finance it. It's just a matter of time. If there will be enough theaters by 2007 or if we'll have to wait a little bit longer. But it's going to happen, and it's going to happen in the near future.

Ya, we have James Cameron, Robert Rodreguiz...

Steve Sansweet: Ya, a lot of people are going digital. The thing with digital is, it's just a transmission method. It can look like film. You can make it do whatever you want to do. It's just an easier kind of thing to use.

Indiana Jones?

Steve Sansweet: We're all hoping. We have our fingers crossed. There's a script that's been done. We just need to get the buy-off of three very independent men: Harrison Ford, Steven Speilberg and George Lucas. And were all hoping that there is an agreement and that we can go ahead and film Indy 4 sometime this year, late this year.

Any details you can give up?

Steve Sansweet: George knows, Harrison knows and Steven knows, and they are keeping a very closed mouth about it. I don't know, that's for sure.

Any last comments you wanna throw in there?

Steve Sansweet: It's so great to see the fans out there supporting us. And they know, as we've been saying, "Star Wars is forever." We really mean it and that's because the fans have been so supportive. They want more and we're going to give them more. As long as they want it, we're going to have it for them.

d'oh ... but it'll be well worth it ... hopefully ...

For Lucas, sure.

Star Wars series to run and run

The TV series spin-off of the Stars Wars film franchise will run to at least 100 episodes, according to producer Rick McCallum.
He told BBC Radio 1 the writing team would soon be meeting to start on the project, which would begin filming in 2008 and be ready the same year.

"Hopefully if we can make it work and everybody's excited and watches it we will keep on going," said McCallum.

The series will be set between episodes three and four of the film saga.

It would cover the 20 years in the life of Luke Skywalker growing up that remains a mystery to most film-goers.

McCallum said there would be "a whole bunch of new characters" and the series would be "much more dramatic and darker".

Huge franchise

He added that it was unlikely any of the stars of the movies would be involved in the TV series.

Star Wars creator George Lucas has just completed writing the script for the next Indiana Jones film and will then begin work on Red Tails, about African-American pilots in World War II.

Following completion of that film, work will begin on the Star Wars TV series.

There has already been a Star Wars series spin-off in the shape of the animated Clone Wars, which began as three-minute episodes before they were expanded to 30-minute shows.

Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, released in 2005, marked the end of the end of the Star Wars saga on the big screen.

It became the biggest film franchise in history, with the final film alone taking £500m at the box office outside of the US.

This is likely going to end up like the star wars holiday special, but harder to cover up.

Nothing is as bad as the Star Wars holiday special. Nothing.

The holiday special transcends "bad," to the point it's actually good, at which point the universe ceased to exist.

Star Wars TV Update
Limited details released.
by Paul Davidson
April 30, 2007 - The Star Wars live-action television series promised by George Lucas was announced back in early 2005, about two years ago. At its initial announcement, producer Rick McCallum suggested the show could reach viewers by early 2007. Since then, however, very few progress updates have been forthcoming from Lucasfilm. Most of the movie-cum-TV-studio's press releases these days concern Star Wars fan conventions and merchandise updates rather than TV or film production. Those readers who haven't forgotten about the series might think it should be nearing some kind of air date soon — or at least the production stage.

Not so, unfortunately. In a recent interview with Dutch Star Wars portal ToscheStation.nl, Rick McCallum painted a disappointing picture of the show's current status. When asked about casting for the series, he replied, "I can't tell you anything about actors because we're not there yet. This is a long process to get it right. First of all: where are we going to shoot? Then: who's going to write? And finally: who's going to direct? George has been working for the last seven, eight months on the story arc line of where the series goes."



Rick McCallumWhile science fiction is a demanding medium, other contemporary and recent TV shows have demonstrated just how quickly a new series can be launched. Star Trek: The Next Generation was conceived in 1986 and premiered in time for the 1987 broadcast season. The new Battlestar Galactica went from a hit TV movie in 2003 to a full-fledged television series in 2004 despite complicated story arcs that had to be planned from the start. Babylon 5, which was similar in scope and length to the proposed Star Wars series, was a little slower out the gate — with planning getting underway in 1991 and the pilot episode airing in 1993. Still, compare the resources at Lucas's disposal to those of B5 creator J. Michael Straczynski.

What kind of time-frame can we expect, then, for the Star Wars TV series? McCallum is currently hoping to shoot the first episode by the end of 2008, allowing the show to make it to broadcast in 2009.

McCallum also reiterated that Lucas was planning the series to be over 100 hours in length, and that the entire character ensemble would be new to audiences.

I don't know, I think there could be some potential with the tv show. It could be something like smallville, kind of keeping the theme, but handled in a much different way. I'd give it a chance, personally.

i'm such a geek that i'll watch it even if it sucks.