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

On the earth of Star Wars, one of many greatest “what ifs?” is Star Wars Underworld. That was the identify given to a tv present George Lucas and a crew 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, displaying 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 concerning the long-lost (however by no means forgotten) undertaking. One of many greatest is that McCallum truly tried to funds out what the present might value and the bottom he ever bought it to was $40 million per episode. Forty million occasions 60 episodes equals $2.4 billion. No surprise nobody wished to make it. However, it sounds nice. Right here’s McCallum because of the Young Indy Chronicles podcast.

“I believe we had over 60 scripts. Third-draft scripts,” McCallum says within the above clip. “Once more, essentially the most great 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 horny, they have been violent, they have been simply completely great. Great, difficult, difficult. I imply, it might have blown up the entire Star Wars universe and Disney positively would have by no means provided George to purchase it [laughs]. Nevertheless it’s one of many nice disappointments of our life. However the issue was every episode was greater than the movies, so the bottom I might get it right down to with the know-how that existed then was about 40 million an episode.”

Even in at the moment’s world, most likely 30 years after McCallum budgeted issues out, $40 million an episode remains to be loads. Many of the greater reveals that you can imagine—Sport of Thrones, The Strolling Useless, and so forth.—often value between $10 million and $20 million an episode. And that’s still considered very high. A few of the costliest have occurred just lately, with Netflix rumored to have spent near $30 million per episode on the brand new Stranger Issues and Amazon reportedly spending virtually $60 million every on Rings of Energy. So for a giant Star Wars present, $40 million shouldn’t be out of the query at the moment, but it surely was definitely 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 reveals 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, similar to this.

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