Posted in: Disney+, Star Wars, TV | Tagged: george lucas, star wars

George Lucas' "Sexy" Star Wars Series Would've Cost $40M+/Episode

Producer Rick McCallum discusses George Lucas' scrapped Star Wars: Underground series, which would have cost around $40M-plus per episode.

Before George Lucas sold his studio Lucasfilm to Disney in 2012 for $4.05 billion, he had at least one major ambitious plan with his biggest franchise Star Wars, a TV series that would have bridged 2005's Revenge of the Sith and 1977's A New Hope, which are episodes three and four of the Skywalker Saga. Under the Disney canon, there have been several projects that take place within the timeframe including 2016's Rogue One, the Disney+ series Andor, The Mandalorian, and The Book of Boba Fett. Executive producer Rick McCallum, who worked with Lucas on the prequel trilogy, appeared on the Young Indy Chronicles podcast to break down what would have been Star Wars: Underworld.

Rick McCallum Sheds Light on George Lucas' Ambitious Star Wars TV Project That Never Was

"I think we had over 60 scripts… like third draft scripts," McCallum told hosts, Peter Holmstrom and Daniel Noa, adding Lucasfilm film recruited the "most wonderful writers in the world" to Lucas' Skywalker Ranch to work to develop the series and had a variety of ideas. "These were dark. They were sexy. They were violent. They were absolutely wonderful, complicated, challenging scripts."

McCallum believes that had the series gone forward, Underworld "would've blown up the whole 'Star Wars' universe, and Disney would've definitely never offered George to buy the franchise." He also called the missed opportunity "one of the great disappointments of our lives" but admits it might have been too ambitious for its own good. "The problem was that each episode was bigger than the films, so the lowest I could get it down to with the tech that existed then was $40 million an episode."

Would it have worked under the Disney regime? Probably not, especially at that $40 million per episode price tag, though the idea isn't so ridiculous now with season four of Netflix's Stranger Things averaging $30 million per episode and Prime Video's The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power's season one at $58 million per episode. Both were released in 2022. As far as Disney's most expensive TV show, that would be Marvel's She-Hulk: Attorney at Law (also in 2022) at $25 million per episode, well below the range that Lucas was aiming for.

Could Lucas's ambitions then be more accommodating for 2025? We'll never know. For more, you can check out the full episode.

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