For several years, George Lucas and Rick McCallum of Lucasfilm promised fans that a live action “Star Wars” TV series was in development while stressing that they couldn’t produce it by themselves because Lucasfilm was an “independant company” that couldn’t afford to spend $5 million per episode.
However, Disney most certainly can afford $5 million per episode; which is a small amount compared to the $4 billion it paid to acquire Lucasfilm last fall specifically to bring “Star Wars” back to movie theaters and to further utilize the franchise.
Over at Entertainment Weekly, ABC President of Entertainment, Paul Lee acknowledges that ABC is considering a way to bring “Star Wars” to broadcast television.
“We’d love to do something with Lucasfilm, we’re not sure what yet,” said Lee. “We haven’t even sat down with them. We’re going to look at [the live-action series], we’re going to look at all of them, and see what’s right. We weren’t able to discuss this with them until [the acquisition] closed and it just closed. It’s definitely going to be part of the conversation.”
Bringing “Star Wars” to ABC makes perfect sense. Disney has the deep pockets needed to finance the TV series and ABC is still one of the most watched networks on television. But it may still take some time. Disney purchased Marvel back in 2010 and it’s taken nearly three years to get a Marvel project fully set up at ABC. Joss Whedon’s “S.H.I.E.L.D.” appears to have a very strong chance to make the 2013 fall schedule.
The Entertainment Weekly story also dropped more specific details about the “Star Wars” live action TV series, including the fact that the upcoming video game, Star Wars: 1313 was largely created from the designs and stories that originated with the television project. Supposedly, the TV series and 1313 both focus on the lower levels of Coruscant as two major families battle it out for control of “the seedy underside of the Star Wars universe.”
The report also noted that “Battlestar Galactica” veteran, Ronald D. Moore was one of the writers who contributed scripts to the unproduced live action TV series.
Lee hedged his bets by questioning whether the “Star Wars” TV series as currently developed was viable for ABC.
“It’s going to be very much up to the Lucasfilm brands how they want to play it,” noted Lee. “We got to a point here with Marvel, a very special point, where we’re in the Marvel universe, and very relevantly so, but we’re not doing The Avengers. But S.H.I.E.L.D. is part of The Avengers. So maybe something oblique is the way to [approach the Star Wars universe] rather than going straight head-on at it.”
However, there has already been so much time and money spent on the current incarnation of the proposed live action “Star Wars” TV series that it would be foolish to simply throw that work away and begin again.
Plus, it would be hard for ABC to resist a programming block that includes Marvel’s “S.H.I.E.L.D” and “Star Wars” TV series potentially on the same night.
What are your thoughts on a live action “Star Wars” series potentially coming to TV? Let us know in the comment section below!
