George Lucas‘ “Star Wars” producer Rick McCallum recently appeared on an episode of the “Young Indy Chronicles” podcast and teased what would’ve been “Star Wars: Underworld,” an ambitious television series that was one of the last “Star Wars” projects Lucas was working on before he sold the franchise to Disney in 2012 for $4.05 billion. The series was set between the events of “Revenge of the Sith” and “A New Hope” and would’ve acted as a bridge between the original “Star Wars” trilogy and the prequel trilogy, the later of which McCallum produced.
“I think we had over 60 scripts… like third draft scripts,” McCallum said, noting they brought the “most wonderful writers in the world” to Lucas’ Skywalker Ranch to map out and pen the series. “These were dark [scripts]. They were sexy. They were violent. They were absolutely wonderful, complicated, challenging scripts.”
McCallum stopped short of providing plot details for “Star Wars: Underworld” but said the series “would’ve blown up the whole ‘Star Wars’ universe and Disney would’ve definitely never offered George to buy the franchise.”
The producer said not making “Underworld” remains “one of the great disappointments of our lives,” adding: “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.”
The series effectively died when Disney purchased Lucasfilm and George Lucas exited his post at the company. Kathleen Kennedy, who joined Lucasfilm in 2012 as co-chair alongside Lucas, was named company president after Disney’s acquisition. She’d bring “Star Wars” to television years later with projects such as “The Mandalorian,” “The Book of Boba Fett,” “Andor,” “Skeleton Crew” and more. Kennedy also shepherded a sequel film trilogy that included “The Force Awakens,” “The Last Jedi” and “The Return of Skywalker.”
Lucas said in an interview in 2020 that it was “very painful” selling his company to Disney and giving up control of the “Star Wars” franchise.
“At that time, I was starting the next trilogy; I talked to the actors and I was starting to gear up,” Lucas explained at the time about why he sold Lucasfilm to Disney. “I was also about to have a daughter with my wife. It takes 10 years to make a trilogy — Episodes I to III took from 1995 to 2005. I’d still be working on Episode IX. In 2012, I was 69. So the question was, ‘Am I going to keep doing this for the rest of my life? Do I want to go through this again?’ Finally, I decided I’d rather raise my daughter and enjoy life for a while.”
Lucas contemplated not putting Lucasfilm up for sale and instead having somebody else run the production of his planned sequel trilogy, but “that isn’t retiring.”
“I’ve spent my life creating ‘Star Wars’ — 40 years — and giving it up was very, very painful,” he added. “But it was the right thing to do. I thought I was going to have a little bit more to say about the next three because I’d already started them, but they decided they wanted to do something else. Things don’t always work out the way you want. Life is like that.”
