STAR WARS Meets BLADE RUNNER in This Test Footage From George Lucas' STAR WARS: UNDERWORLD TV Series
Before Disney bought Lucasfilm and started developing their own Star Wars projects, George Lucas was developing a live-action series titled Star Wars: Underworld. He wanted it to be a 400 episode series, and before the project was put on hold, he reportedly already had 100 completed scripts.
The series was to be set in the Coruscant underworld between Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith and Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope. It was going to be a gangster drama that was likened to Deadwood and The Godfather in space. It was also described as being The Empire Strikes Back on steroids. Lucasfilm producer Rick McCallum previously discussed the project saying:
Basically, it is like The Godfather; it’s the Empire slowly building up its power base around the galaxy, what happens in Coruscant, which is the major capital, and it’s a group of underground bosses who live there and control drugs, prostitution.
There was also a rumor that the show would have involved time travel and killing Darth Vader. That report offered the following info:
One of the series' first episodes will involve a group of bandits acquiring the capability of time travel, and using it to travel back in time to stop Darth Vader from ever existing.
This was a series that I always wanted to see get made! Unfortunately, it’ll probably never happen. But, today some test footage from the series was shared online and it shows us what this series would have looked like, and it’s awesome!
As you’ll see, the style of the series was heavily influenced by Blade Runner and it’s actually pretty cool. Remember this is just test footage and it’s not as polished as it could be. This looks like it would have made a solid series and I’d actually be interested in seeing how the story plays out. When previously talking about the project Kathleen Kennedy said:
“Interestingly enough, that's an area we’ve spent a lot of time, reading through the material that he developed is something we very much would like to explore. And there was 1313 the game, where there was…unbelievable. So our attitude is, we don’t want to throw any of that stuff away. It’s gold. And it’s something we’re spending a lot of time looking at, pouring through, discussing, and we may very well develop those things further. We definitely want to.”
The video also features a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the test footage. Watch it and let us know if you’d like to see Star Wars: Underworld get made!