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Lucas Confirms Star Wars spin-off TV series
Mictian writes "In a rare public appearance at the Star Wars Celebration III (his previous fan event appearance was in 1987), George Lucas confirmed that he's working on two TV series. One will be a full 3D animation series (with 30-minute episodes) of the recent Cartoon Network Clone Wars shorts, and the other a live-action series, that will be set in the time between Episodes III and IV, but won't feature the main characters. Production is expected to begin in about a year."
Star wars fans, confused and bewildered, have begun huddling around random television sets not sure where they are supposed to be in line at to eagerly anticipate the new t.v. show.
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Ah yes, who among us does not fondly remember Ewoks, or the Star Wars Holiday Special
Search your inner child, you know it to be true.
"There's companies that are just so cool that you just can't even deal with it," - Bill Gates, about Google
"...but won't feature the main characters."
This will be tough thing to avoid. I've ready quite a few Star Wars novels in my day and all of them have noteable characters from the movies sprinkled throughout the plotlines. I could see how they might avoid using main characters if they set the television series Pre-episode I or pretty far past episode 6 (post new jedi order?) but for the series to take place between episodes 3 and 4 would require a few staple characters to make regular apperances in order for the audience to become grounded.
I recently watched that amateur Star Wars fan film "Revelations" and without an appearence by Darth Vader, it wouldn't have seemed like Star Wars. The sets and sabers alone just don't draw me in like the cast of characters that everyone is familiar with.
Here's hoping that is an overstatement and we'll see a few familiar faces in the series.
The Clone Wars on Cartoon Network was awesome. That's what I want in a cartoon and it's what I want in Star Wars. Shitpan Star Wars all you want, I want Genndy Tartakovsky to make more!
:)
And considering Lucas is not specifically directing the cartoons, I figure the mouth frothing Star Wars critics would actually enjoy them
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
The books for Episodes 7-9 have been out since 1992-1993: Heir to the Empire, Dark Force Rising, The Last Command. That trilogy takes place 5 years after ROTJ and further, authorized books go out 14 years after ROTJ. There are two problems with making sequels: There's way too much new story and background to pick from for new films. And, the sequel books are written by Timothy Zahn et al and not George Lucas...so George might not want to make a Star Wars film out of something he didn't write.
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Why do I so often hear tons of noise about the Star Wars story beyond XI? It was my understanding that the story was about Anakin Skywalker - his origins, growth, corruption, and, finally, redemption. What more is to be told?
I pity the foo that isn't metasyntactic
I have never heard anyone wish that Lucas would make *more* Star Wars movies.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
"several dead tauntauns were found in the desert of tatooine, having been beaten to a pulp after dying of starvation."
I can see it now - CSI: Tatooine.
Aren't there enough spinoffs already?
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You know the topic is STARWARS when all the trolling is rated "informative" or "insigthful"...
Eh.
laverne and shirley always had the fonz pop up now and then for ratings... sooner or later vader will jump out and say "ayyyyy" with a big thumbs up.
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
[phone rings]
.... Well, we're done with that franchise now... it sorta died out, the demand wasn't there... no... well, y'see, we thought we might be able to do the same for you. Whaddyathink? Couple of spinoff TV series, no original characters... mmhmmm... Brannon reckons we can introduce some of the original characters back later if it doesn't take off... yeah we could do that, tried and tested formula eh... sure, we can meet..."
"George, hi! It's Rick - Rick Berman, you remember Star Trek? Yeah, that one, I sorta invented Star Trek you know... Gene who...?
*sigh*
Smegma.
It's because the Star Wars universe consists of more than just the movies. After the original trilogy many novels have been written about what happens to the characters after "Return of the Jedi." All of the plotlines in these novels are approved by George Lucuas himself. Therefore, if he were to create sequels, they would either A) make the novels no longer relevant since he's making movies that don't reflect those stories, or B) He would just be making the novels into movies. (Timothy Zhan's sp?) Admiral Thrawn series would be excellent.
While all of these novels were being created, Lucas publication arm would not allow any to be made Pre "A New Hope" because he always intended to make movies out of the back-story. Therefore the new movies haven't bungled up the universe or plotlines (at least not much). In fact the only books I recall that centered around pre-episode 4 content was the Han Solo trilogy that is a pretty good set of books that tells Han Solo's back story from about age 17 to right about the time he walks into the cantina in episode 4.
I hope this helps.
As far as I know, there are no parts 7,8 and 9 to be filmed. :)
Indeed there are such rumours, but that's a common mistake. Lucas originally thought he'd need 9 films to tell the story, but already before he finished filming all 3 of the original movies, he concluded that 6 would be enough.
Some form of draft was made for 7, 8 and 9, but they date back from before 5 and 6 were filmed and have now become obsolete. Some of the things were already used in the plots for part 4, 5 and 6, and some of the events described in there have become overruled by what happens in 4, 5 and 6.
Think of the original drafts as being a short paragraph each; just a brainstorm for some important events. Oh, sure if you do a Google for those scripts you'll find a lot of stuff. But don't let yourself be fooled, that's all fan fiction or wishful thinking.
See also these pages: http://scifi.about.com/library/starwars/bl-sixorni ne.htm
http://theforce.net/latestnews/story/gary_kurtz_re veals_original_plans_for_episodes_19_80270.asp
Conclusion: even if Lucas *wanted* to make parts 7, 8 and 9, he'd have to go back to the writing table and work out all new stories. He used the best parts from the original drafts to write the scripts for part 5 and 6, and what he didn't use was appearantly rubbish, or has become obsolete and unusable in any case.
"I felt a great disturbance in the Force...as if a million voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced."