George Lucas’ Scrapped Star Wars Present Would’ve Price BIllions of {Dollars}

On the planet of Star Wars, one of many greatest “what ifs?” is Star Wars Underworld. That was the identify given to a tv present George Lucas and a staff at Lucasfilm labored on for years earlier than ultimately scrapping it. We’ve all the time heard that there have been dozens of scripts written for the present, which would’ve been set on Coruscant, exhibiting an entire new aspect of a galaxy far, far, away, however little is understood past that.

In a brand new interview although, Rick McCallum, who was George Lucas’ producer at the time, shared some new particulars in regards to the long-lost (however by no means forgotten) mission. One of many greatest is that McCallum truly tried to price range out what the present might value and the bottom he ever received it to was $40 million per episode. Forty million occasions 60 episodes equals $2.4 billion. No surprise nobody wished to make it. However, it sounds nice. Right here’s McCallum due to the Young Indy Chronicles podcast.

“I feel we had over 60 scripts. Third-draft scripts,” McCallum says within the above clip. “Once more, essentially the most fantastic writers on this planet on it. And once more, we created precisely the identical expertise for everyone at [Skywalker] Ranch, and once more only a phenomenal group of expertise.”

“And these have been darkish. They have been horny, they have been violent, they have been simply completely fantastic. Fantastic, difficult, difficult. I imply, it could have blown up the entire Star Wars universe and Disney positively would have by no means provided George to purchase it [laughs]. Nevertheless it’s one of many nice disappointments of our life. However the issue was every episode was larger than the movies, so the bottom I might get it all the way down to with the expertise that existed then was about 40 million an episode.”

Even in as we speak’s world, most likely 30 years after McCallum budgeted issues out, $40 million an episode remains to be so much. Many of the larger reveals that you can imagine—Recreation of Thrones, The Strolling Lifeless, and so forth.—normally value between $10 million and $20 million an episode. And that’s still considered very high. A few of the most costly have occurred not too long ago, with Netflix rumored to have spent near $30 million per episode on the brand new Stranger Issues and Amazon reportedly spending virtually $60 million every on Rings of Energy. So for a giant Star Wars present, $40 million shouldn’t be out of the query as we speak, nevertheless it was actually out of the query then. (Additionally, The Mandalorian prices considerably lower than that.)

For extra on Star Wars Underworld, check out this piece we wrote a few years back. It reveals take a look at footage McCallum commissioned to assist promote the present to TV networks. It didn’t work out, nevertheless it’s a cool little bit of trivia and historical past, similar to this.

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