Former George Lucas-Developed ‘Star Wars’ Series Could Have Kept Disney From Buying the Franchise
Long before Disney+ launched and The Mandalorian debuted, George Lucas planned to bring Star Wars to television in a radically different way.
For years, Lucas developed a project titled Star Wars: Underworld. Often described as a Star Wars series for adults, the show would have been set between the events of Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope and showcased a seedier side of the galaxy far, far away.
Photo: Variety
Unfortunately for fans, plans for Star Wars: Underworld never came to fruition.
‘Star Wars’ Producer Rick McCallum Discusses ‘Underworld’
In a recent interview on the Young Indy Chronicles podcast, Star Wars producer Rick McCallum shed some light on Underworld.
According to McCallum, Lucasfilm brought the “most wonderful writers in the world” to Lucas’s Skywalker Ranch to work on the series.
Photo: Lucasfilm
“I think we had over 60 scripts… like third draft scripts,” he said. “These were dark [scripts]. They were sexy. They were violent. They were absolutely wonderful, complicated, challenging scripts.”
“Disney Would’ve Definitely Never Offered George to Buy the Franchise”
While McCallum would not divulge the content of the Star Wars: Underworld scripts, he did assert that if the series had been released, it would have changed the course of history.
“[Star Wars: Underworld] would’ve blown up the whole ‘Star Wars’ universe and Disney would’ve definitely never offered George to buy the franchise,” he said.
Photo: Lucasfilm
When asked why the show never came to fruition, McCallum explained that it would have been wildly expensive.
“The problem was that each episode was bigger than the films, so the lowest I could get it down to with the each that existed then was $40 million an episode,” he said.
A Great “What If?”
The final death knell for Underworld came when Lucas sold Lucasfilm to Disney. Under the leadership of Kathleen Kennedy, the franchise would eventually come to television.
Credit: Disney
A decade after George Lucas sold his company, Star Wars: Underworlds remains one of Hollywood’s great “what ifs?”.
