Despite its cancellation, ‘Star Wars: Underworld’ became one of the franchise’s most influential series
Without a doubt, one of the biggest failures of Star Wars is also one of the most influential works in the evolution of the franchise in the last decade. And in 2005, an ambitious live-action series was announced that would cover the gap between the original trilogy and the prequels. It was his own idea George Lucas and featured famous screenwriters such as Ronald D. Moore (‘Battlestar Galactica’) in their ranks.
However, the megaproject was canceled after years of work. I’m talking about ‘Star Wars: Underworld’, the series (well, the title is a project) that would take us through the streets of the galactic nuclei hugging genres such as noir, crime drama and political thriller in decidedly complex plots. In fact, among his producers they were talking about ‘Deadwood’ in space, among other influences.
They arrivedplan no less than 100 episodes in which we would see, among other things, the Empire trying to stabilize its power through institutions. Of these 100 outlined episodes (about 42 minutes), the scripts for 50 of them were completed. However, everything ended up being a dead letter since it was decided to throw it away shortly after the sale to Disney.
“The impossible”
The reason? Well, more than creative things, it was simply a matter of money. This was stated by the president of Lucasfilm, Kathleen Kennedyin Vanity Fair:
«I think part of the reason there was a reluctance to even think about Star Wars on television is because we have to create everything. Nothing exists. We can’t walk down the streets of New York and start rolling. We have to create the world. It is constant world building. “Every ship, every bike, every piece of clothing, everything has to be created, so it was a big expense.”
Some budget issues that they decided to “overlook” from the ranch when they were planning episodes. “His mandate [de Lucas] in the scripts it was “Think big. Don’t worry. We’ll do it. The budget is not a problem.”Moore acknowledges in an interview with Inverse, “so we wrote these gigantic scenes.”
Well yes it was a problem. According to the producer Rick McCallumthey should have found a way to do all this, every week, with a budget of only five million dollars…and of course, without the technology that would currently have allowed it to be done properly.
However, even though ‘Star Wars: Underworld’ was cancelled, that does not mean that it did not become, paradoxically, the great influence on Star Wars productions in this era of Disney. So much so that Lucas began to suggest some of the ideas and plots so that Dave Filoni I poured them into episodes of ‘The Clone Wars’; The origin of films like ‘Rogue One’ and ‘Solo’ can also be traced to these discarded scripts.
Despite its cancellation, a few years ago we were able to see a conceptual proof of what could have been and will never see. At least as it was originally planned.
In Espinof:
