George Lucas’ Scrapped Star Wars Present Would’ve Value 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 workforce 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 facet 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 finances out what the present might value and the bottom he ever obtained it to was $40 million per episode. Forty million instances 60 episodes equals $2.4 billion. No marvel nobody wished to make it. However, it sounds nice. Right here’s McCallum because of the Young Indy Chronicles podcast.

“I believe we had over 60 scripts. Third-draft scripts,” McCallum says within the above clip. “Once more, essentially the most great writers on the earth 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 had been darkish. They had been attractive, they had been violent, they had been simply completely great. Great, difficult, difficult. I imply, it might have blown up the entire Star Wars universe and Disney undoubtedly would have by no means supplied George to purchase it [laughs]. But it surely’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 right down to with the know-how that existed then was about 40 million an episode.”

Even in right now’s world, in all probability 30 years after McCallum budgeted issues out, $40 million an episode remains to be quite a bit. Many of the larger exhibits that you can imagine—Sport of Thrones, The Strolling Useless, and so forth.—normally value between $10 million and $20 million an episode. And that’s still considered very high. Among the costliest have occurred lately, 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 an enormous Star Wars present, $40 million isn’t out of the query right now, but it surely 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 exhibits take a look at footage McCallum commissioned to assist promote the present to TV networks. It didn’t work out, but it surely’s a cool little bit of trivia and historical past, identical to this.

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