New Star Wars Series

azezil

From: http://www.sky.com/showbiz/article/0,,50001-1215387,00.html

Star Wars creator George Lucas has agreed to make 100 episodes, covering the years between prequel Episode III: Revenge Of The Sith and the first 1977 Star Wars movie.

From: http://www.indiantelevision.com/headlines/y2k6/mar/mar205.htm

The series is being produced by Rick McCullum and is expected to spark a big-money bidding war between the BBC and ITV, reports said.

"Writers will soon start work to prepare for filming and release in 2008, said McCallum adding, " The series will introduce "a whole bunch of new characters" and be "much more dramatic and darker". George Lucas has committed himself to writing the Star Wars TV series. It'll all be new because the originals will be too old."

They will fill in the missing years between 2005's prequel, Revenge Of The Sith, and original film Star Wars, made in 1977. The TV series will focus on the rise of Darth Vader's dark empire and will feature original actor Anthony Daniels, who played robot C-3P0.

The Star Wars films are among the most popular ever made and tell the story of the descent into evil of Jedi knight Anakin Skywalker and his redemption by son, Luke.

Scoops

Series producer Rick McCullum told the Daily Mirror: "We're very excited - we just got confirmation George Lucas has committed himself to writing the Star Wars TV series.

Excellent!!

AnCapaillMor

100 episodes thats a bit too much is'nt it. Looking forward to it, but 100 episodes sounds insane.

Laguna

Whilst this is cool, what upsets me is the fact that it's set between ROTS and ANH, the period when all the Jedi are gone and, lets face it, the Jedi are the best thing about Star Wars. What worries me is we'll get a series based around some boring bounty hunters or some crap like that, we're not going to get any Jedi action at all are we? - Obi-Wan's flicking his bean on Tatooine doing **** all for the 19 year period, Yoda's getting down with the beasts from the swamp on Dagobah so we're unlikely to see him either.

In my opinion, what would be cool is if the series followed a group of clone soldiers (e.g. Commander Cody and his platoon - along the lines of the Xbox game Republic Commando) and their adventures maybe?..

AnCapaillMor

another bad thing is that its following a bad situation going worse. It's about a dark\bad time. Can't see that being made watchable.

Laguna

AnCapaillMor wrote:

another bad thing is that its following a bad situation going worse. It's about a dark\bad time. Can't see that being made watchable.

That's very true, if it's all doom and gloom with the Empire getting stronger and stronger, who're you supposed to root for in the show if you know things don't improve for the 'good guys' until ANH?..

Pigman II

I think it'll be an ok show. I imagine it will to be to the SW movies what Young Indiana Jones Chronicles was to the Indy Trilogy ie a decent tv show that you can either take or leave when considering SW. Personally I enjoyed young Indy and liked the fact that it was him going in a different direction to the character in the movie. Hopefully SW tv will shoot off in different directions that we might have expected too.

I think people looking for 100hours of quality and content that matches the movies will be dissapointed.

jaggeh

100 episodes is only 4 series

cotwold

Laguna wrote:

Whilst this is cool, what upsets me is the fact that it's set between ROTS and ANH, the period when all the Jedi are goneQUOTE]

Not neccessarily, most of the jedi are gone but there are still many in hiding throughout the galaxy. This series will most likely follow Darth Vaders quest to rid the galaxy of the jedi aswell as the rebellion

cotwold

AnCapaillMor wrote:

100 episodes thats a bit too much is'nt it. Looking forward to it, but 100 episodes sounds insane.

Maybe, but another way of looking at it is, George Lucas is only writing 100 hundred episodes. Id say people said 3 movies would be a bit too much back in the 70s when he first started main the original trilogy. It wont matter if he makes another 1000 episodes i'll still be disapointed to see the end of star wars

Darth Chef

cotwold wrote:

Maybe, but another way of looking at it is, George Lucas is only writing 100 hundred episodes.

I doubt he will be writing ANY of the 100 episodes tbh. IIRC he didn't write any of the YoungIndy eps and I can see it being no different for SW. I'm sure this is just his way of 'signing off' from the project whilst still keeping SW alive.

lordarpad

I wish it wasn't Lucas writing those episodes but Timothy Zahn or somebody ...

The Bollox

[sarcasm]oh BRILLIANT! I can't f*cking wait for this![/sarcasm]

FFS! the one thing that had me not wanting to get into Star Trek was because it was a TV show, because if you miss one episode then you don't really know what the hell is going on in the following one. I say leave SW the way it is: films. if Georgie Porgie wants to squeeze more money out of the franchise, then he should make the ending trilogy, Mark Hammill and them will be all old enough to take up the role again as older versions of the characters

Pigman II

Marts wrote:

[sarcasm]oh BRILLIANT! I can't f*cking wait for this![/sarcasm]

FFS! the one thing that had me not wanting to get into Star Trek was because it was a TV show, because if you miss one episode then you don't really know what the hell is going on in the following one.

Well Star Trek eps seem very stand-alone to me (esp in TOS and TNG). It doesn't really matter what order you watch them in I found? I don't think (hope?) this SW show will have to be watch in order either (all the rumours I hear are of stand-alone stories, rather than an arc)?

I say leave SW the way it is: films. if Georgie Porgie wants to squeeze more money out of the franchise, then he should make the ending trilogy, Mark Hammill and them will be all old enough to take up the role again as older versions of the characters

I think GL knows his years are limited now and he doesn't want to spend another 10 making another trilogy. And could you blame him? Personally I'd rather see him try make something quirky and interesting like THX1138 or American Grafitti than see him make yet another Star Wars or Indy movie.

Besides I think the notion of 'what happened after ROTJ' was something that interested fans and writers more than actually interested GL himself.

jaggeh

the series will NOT be about vader, lucas confirmed that at celebrations last year. he has confirmed that it will be about other characters from the original and prequal trilogys. easy answer there is jabba and his cronies as most of them can be CGI/dubbed fairly easily. that and daniel logan has confirmed signing contract for the show, so its safe to assume its going to deal heavily with bounty hunters.

The only place i see for jedi in the tv show is their death scenes.

Scruff

is this going to be cgi or with actors?

letting George write it means it'll probably be atrocious, script wise, as the films.

cotwold

Darth Chef wrote:

I doubt he will be writing ANY of the 100 episodes tbh. IIRC he didn't write any of the YoungIndy eps and I can see it being no different for SW. I'm sure this is just his way of 'signing off' from the project whilst still keeping SW alive.

Obviously he wont be writing the scripts but i take it he'll have written the overall story. right?

Pigman II

Will there even be an 'overall story' tho? Young Indy was set primarily during WWI but that was just a very loose skeleton that gave the excuse to go lots of places and meet famous people from history.

Perhaps SW TV will be like this with one central (but minor in the grand scheme of things) character stumbling across various events and people from the SW universe. That was certainly the formula for the movies (esp the OT) with R2D2 and C3PO being the two 'nobodies' caught up in everything that was going on around them.

I'm really interested to see how this show will work.

Goodshape

Pigman II wrote:

Will there even be an 'overall story' tho?

I'm hoping that they'll take a cue from the success of shows like Battlestar Glactica and Firefly and give us an interesting and ongoing story arc for the series.

Someone mentioned they wouldn't like this as it creates a neccessity to tune in every week -- but in the age of DVDs and downloads, I don't think this is the problem that it used to be.

The Bollox

Pigman II wrote:

Besides I think the notion of 'what happened after ROTJ' was something that interested fans and writers more than actually interested GL himself.

I think, in fairness, these are Lucas's ideas, he can jerk off to whatever he wants to think up about the period between EP3 and EP4. the fans want to see some action from EP6 onwards. I just think he is being selfish!

Pigman II

Marts wrote:

I think, in fairness, these are Lucas's ideas, he can jerk off to whatever he wants to think up about the period between EP3 and EP4. the fans want to see some action from EP6 onwards. I just think he is being selfish!

Of course he's being selfish. He's always said he makes movies primarily to please himself but if anyone (or a lot of people) likes them too then thats great. Hell I know if I was in his position I'd be making what I want too and not what you want or they want or the studio wants......

Goodshape

I agree. It's just a pity that what he wants seems to be a big pile of poo.

Some people may want to make the best films/tv shows possible... but not him. Poo will do just fine for George Lucas.

Laguna

Pigman II wrote:

Of course he's being selfish. He's always said he makes movies primarily to please himself but if anyone (or a lot of people) likes them too then thats great. Hell I know if I was in his position I'd be making what I want too and not what you want or they want or the studio wants......

Well I never knew he said that, he was obviously the kid at school with all the new toys but lacked the social skills to have friends (a la Eric Cartman). Making movies to please himself?, jesus, I know most directors efforts are vanity projects but I guess that explains why the Star Wars films he directed are the least liked (all the prequel trilogy and A New Hope).

Pigman II

Might indeed. But I think there's there probably a lot of directors like this. Only difference is GL is the only one who can operate this way at the $100m level rather than at $10k.

mcgarnicle

I like how everyone knows that GL will do everything wrong, I mean if everyone here is so much better than him why don't you just go do what he did, make the movie you want to see yourself. If I were in his position I would make exactly what I wanted to see, that is what he has always done, why change it now after it has made him a billionaire?