In a recent interview, Rick McCallum, the producer of the «Star Wars» franchise, spoke about the canceled George Lucas series, the scale of which could have disrupted Disney’s deal to buy Lucasfilm.
According to McCallum (via Variety), the series called «Star Wars: Underworld» was supposed to take place between the events of «Revenge of the Sith» and «A New Hope», and in fact become a link between the original «Star Wars» trilogy and the prequel trilogy.
«I think we had over 60 scripts,» says McCallum, noting that they brought «the best writers in the world» to Lucas’ ranch to plan and write the series. «They were dark scripts, sexy, violent and challenging».
However, the main problem was the price of the series:
«The lowest amount I could allow with the technology that existed at the time was $40 million per episode».
McCallum did not provide plot details, but said that the «series would have undermined the entire Star Wars universe, and Disney would definitely never have offered George to buy the» franchise.
The producer notes that the cancellation of the series is still one of the biggest disappointments in his life «. The idea was abandoned just as Disney took over Lucasfilm for $4 billion, and Kathleen Kennedy was brought in to lead the studio. Since then, the world has seen many television shows in the «Star Wars» franchise, but only a few were able to come close to success of Lucas’ films — «Mandalorian» і «Andor» In particular
Kennedy also created the the continuation of a trilogy that included «The Force Awakens», which still remains the highest-grossing film in US box office history, but the triad of Skywalker-centered blockbusters performed significantly worse: «The Rise of Skywalker», for example, although it earned $1 billion, the amount was half that of «The Force Awakens»; while the spinoff «Solo. Star Wars. A Star Wars Story» in 2018 was marked by a major financial collapse and became the first film in the history of «Star Wars» to lose money during its theatrical release.
In a 2020 interview, Lucas himself notedthat it was «very painful» for him to sell his company to Disney and give up control of the Star Wars franchise».
«At that time, I was starting the next trilogy; I talked to the actors and started preparing,» he said. «Also, my wife and I were going to have a daughter. It takes 10 years to make a trilogy — Episodes I through III ran from 1995 to 2005. I would still be working on Episode IX. In 2012, I was 69. So the questions were: “Am I going to do this for the rest of my life? Do I want to go through this again?” Finally, I decided that I would rather raise my daughter and enjoy life for a while».
Lucas was thinking of not putting Lucasfilm up for sale and instead having someone else start production on his planned sequel trilogy, but «would not mean retirement».
«I spent my life making Star Wars — 40 years — and giving it up was very, very painful. But it was the right thing to do. I thought I had to tell a little bit more in the next three movies and so I had already started them, but they decided they wanted to do something else. Things don’t always work out the way you want them to. Life is like that».
We remind you that for some time now There are rumors about Kathleen Kennedy’s departureeven though she’s still «very involved» in working on future projectsand the movie starring Daisy Ridley in particular.
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