A Case Study in Burying the Lede: Star Wars Stuff
So this celebrity fluff piece runs under a headline that says that George Lucas thought Spiderman 3 was “silly” and includes lots of gushing about how great celebrities looked at a Time‘s “100 most influential people” event. And on and on.
Down near the bottom, we have this:
And here’s a little news: Lucas tells me he will make two more live-action films based in the “Star Wars” era.
“But they won’t have members of the Skywalker family as characters,” he said. “They will be other people of that milieu.”
The two extra films will also be made for TV and probably be an hour long each. But, like “Clone Wars,” Lucas doesn’t know where on TV they will land.
More Star Wars movies? Isn’t that big news, even if they will be made for TV? I mean, even if Lucas has betrayed my trust three too many times, this seems noteworthy to me.
Posted on May 9, 2007, in Film, Television. Bookmark the permalink. 10 Comments.
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There have already been two made for TV Star Wars movies. If you don’t remember them, it is because they were forgettable. Ewoks dealing with a family that crashed on Endor and Ewoks dealing with a witch I believe.
Oh! I remember that series with the Ewoks and the family that crashed on Endor. Didn’t the parents die, and there was just a boy and a girl who survived, but were separated? Not the best TV (I’m sure)–it didn’t last long. I remember it, though.
The Ewok movies were two movies of the week made for ABC. I thought they were alright as a kid. But yeah, they really weren’t good. I think they are available on DVD still.
There were some cartoons as well. One with Ewoks and one with C3PO. But I don’t remember much about them beyond their being bad.
As for this news (which is actually pretty old news) how good it is depends upon how little involvement Lucas has. The two Clone Wars series for Cartoon Network were very good. Far better than the trilogy of the Clone Wars.
However I suspect we’ll end up with something more like the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. Lots of potential lost by Lucas’ soft sentimentality and poor story telling. There were some fun episodes in that with some surprisingly good directors doing episodes.
Spiderman 3 was silly?!
Lucas, Kettle is returning your call on lines 1-3.
Who is Lucas to say S3 was silly?! What about Howard the Duck, or Phantom Menace? What a moron.
And please for the love of God he needs to stop milking the SW franchise. The horse is dead; stop kicking it. Sci-fi has moved on. Get over it.
For those who follow the Star Wars news sites obsessively (like me, alas), Lucas has been talking about a Star Wars TV series for some time now.
The concept seems to change from week to week and interview to interview. It’s been everything from “The Young Han Solo (or Boba Fett or Luke Skywalker) Chronicles” to a generic Bounty Hunter thingy to a “last of the jedi on the run” dealie.
Also, he vacilates on whether it will be an animated series, a live action drama (or even sitcom), or a series of TV movies.
Frankly, this news is over two years old to us diehards, and all it does it tell us the final form of the TV project is (still) in development.
Wait until LFL makes an official announcement.
Ivan, I’m pretty sure the standard line for the last year is that it’ll take place between III and IV and may occasionally feature a young Solo but will largely be new characters.
There reportedly is an other cartoon series being done for the cartoon network. But I believe that is quite separate. Other than some PR art I don’t know what that is about. (Although it features Yoda and appears to be done by the same guys who did Clone Wars — which means the Samurai Jack movie is farther away still…)
Well here’s a good archive:
http://theforce.net/swtv/
by digging through it, it’s fairly clear that the one reason we can say the standard line “for the last year” hasn’t changed is because there hasn’t been any real news on that front since between early 2006 and now.
There is discussion of an animated series and a live action series as seperate, but the news on the live action series seems to change from announcement to announcement. Probably as the R&D changes.
What I’m trying to say is that nothing is really final until LFL releases something official.
LOL Jennifer!
Perhaps the lede was buried because it was false:
http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/index.php?category=0&id=41624
Lucasfilm’s head of fan relations, Stephen Sansweet, shot down [a] report that George Lucas was planning two Star Wars TV movies in an interview with Movieweb.
“No, no, no, no,” Sansweet told the site when asked about Friedman’s reported. “There are going to be two more Star Wars television series. One of them is well into production. That is Star Wars: Clone Wars. It’s a CG-animated show, which we suspect will be on the air sometime next year.”
Sansweet added: “And then George and [Star Wars producer] Rick McCallum were just now starting work on a live-action series. A drama. That will probably be coming out in 2009 or 2010. He is actively at work on both of those.