George Lucas’ Scrapped Star Wars Present Would�...

On this planet of Star Wars, one of many largest “what ifs?” is Star Wars Underworld. That was the title given to a tv present George Lucas and a staff at Lucasfilm labored on for years earlier than ultimately scrapping it. We’ve all the time heard that there have been dozens of scripts written for the present, which would’ve been set on Coruscant, exhibiting a complete new facet of a galaxy far, far, away, however little is thought past that.

In a brand new interview although, Rick McCallum, who was George Lucas’ producer at the time, shared some new particulars in regards to the long-lost (however by no means forgotten) venture. One of many largest is that McCallum really tried to funds out what the present may price and the bottom he ever received it to was $40 million per episode. Forty million instances 60 episodes equals $2.4 billion. No marvel nobody needed to make it. However, it sounds nice. Right here’s McCallum due to the Young Indy Chronicles podcast.

“I feel we had over 60 scripts. Third-draft scripts,” McCallum says within the above clip. “Once more, probably the most fantastic writers on this planet on it. And once more, we created precisely the identical expertise for everyone at [Skywalker] Ranch, and once more only a phenomenal group of expertise.”

“And these have been darkish. They have been attractive, they have been violent, they have been simply completely fantastic. Fantastic, sophisticated, difficult. I imply, it will have blown up the entire Star Wars universe and Disney positively would have by no means provided George to purchase it [laughs]. However it’s one of many nice disappointments of our life. However the issue was every episode was larger than the movies, so the bottom I may get it all the way down to with the expertise that existed then was about 40 million an episode.”

Even in right now’s world, most likely 30 years after McCallum budgeted issues out, $40 million an episode continues to be rather a lot. A lot of the larger exhibits that you can imagine—Recreation of Thrones, The Strolling Lifeless, and so forth.—normally price between $10 million and $20 million an episode. And that’s still considered very high. A number of the most costly have occurred lately, with Netflix rumored to have spent near $30 million per episode on the brand new Stranger Issues and Amazon reportedly spending nearly $60 million every on Rings of Energy. So for an enormous Star Wars present, $40 million will not be out of the query right now, but it surely was actually out of the query then. (Additionally, The Mandalorian prices considerably lower than that.)

For extra on Star Wars Underworld, check out this piece we wrote a few years back. It exhibits check footage McCallum commissioned to assist promote the present to TV networks. It didn’t work out, but it surely’s a cool little bit of trivia and historical past, identical to this.

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