ABC eyes new Star Wars series

Posted January 12, 2013 - 21:09 by David Konow

When Lucasfilm was sold to Disney, for a moment you wondered how many more Star Wars stories were there left to tell.

As it turns out, the Star Wars powers that be believe there’s plenty more stories to tell in many different formats for many years to come, like the Clone Wars series, which recently hit its 100th episode, the state of the art Star Wars video games, and more.

There’s also a Star Wars series that’s been in the works for a while for ABC. As Collider notes, Rick McCallum was slated to produce the show, but he’s now retired from the Lucas empire. McCallum has said that there are fifty screenplays for the show already, including a script by Ron Moore of Battlestar Galactica fame.

The show is supposed to take place in the time period between Revenge of the Sith and a New Hope, yet the show will be about other characters in the Star Wars universe instead of the usual suspects from the films.

McCallum also said that this would be a darker look at the Star Wars universe, which Collider described as "Empire Strikes Back on steroids, with a touch of Deadwood." McCallum also called the pile of series scripts the most "provocative, bold and daring material that we’ve ever done."

Sounds great, right? Well, the problem is the series could end up costing $5 million an episode, and like all of Lucas’s deals, his company would own the property, and ABC would have a smaller piece of the profits.

When asked about the series, Paul Lee, the president of ABC, told Entertainment Weekly, said, "We’d love to do something with Lucasfilm, we’re not sure what yet. 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."

ABC is similarly doing the Avengers spin-off series, S.H.I.E.L.D, which will be on the air several years before Avengers 2 hits theaters in 2015.

Lee added that "It’s going to be very much up to the Lucasfilm brands how they want to play it. We got to a point here with Marvel where we’re in the Marvel universe, but we’re not doing The Avengers. 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."

Where at first you’d think having new Star Wars movies, as well as a series, could be spreading it too thin, the prospect of a darker Star Wars on television is an intriguing prospect.

It would indeed be great to see a parallel take on the Star Wars universe on TV while the new movies play in theaters. If this is indeed, as McCallum put it, “provocative, bold and daring,” it would be a shame to see it go to waste.