George Lucas finally talks Season 1 Live action show

oscar_merkx · 03-18-2008, 06:07 PM

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ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: How does it dovetail with the live-action TV series that you've announced?

GEORGE LUCAS: I'm just starting to work on the scripts now for the live-action TV series. We finished the first year of Clone Wars, [and] we're in the middle of working on the second year. I'm finishing the scripts for the third year. And now I'm working on the scripts for the first year of the live-action show. [Smiles] So it's a lot of scripts.

Where is the live-action one going to fit into the overall Star Wars narrative?
It's completely separate. This one has all of the characters that everybody knows — everybody from Yoda to Anakin to Mace Windu to Obi-Wan — everybody's there. The live-action has nobody there, because it's after Episode III, so everybody's dead, basically, or hiding somewhere. You hear about the Emperor, just like you do in Episode IV, but it's mostly about a whole different world. I mean, there are a million stories in the big city — you've only seen one of them. [Laughs]

Yeah, but I guess there is stuff that you could imagine coming in between parts III and IV — for example, we never saw a young Han Solo.
No, well, this has nothing to do with those series. Some of the characters from the features find their way in there, so it's not completely divorced. It's as if we just went down the street and told a different story. You know, we were doing, I don't know, 24, and now we're going to move down the street here and do The Wire. Same thing, it's just different people doing the same thing in the same city.

With the same Emperor.
Yeah.

And the same rules.
Yeah, all the same rules, all the same places, all the same stuff, and a lot of the same species. So it's a familiar world, it's just that you're seeing a completely different side of it.

Do you have a network yet?
Not yet.

Are you still hoping for 100 episodes?
Yeah, I'm going to 100 episodes no matter what.

Cast?
No, we haven't gotten there yet.

Have you built any sets or done any mockups?
No, what we do in our TV series is we write the entire first year and finish it as a script. Then we start getting ready to shoot it, then we start casting, and then we do it. We know where the whole first year is before we even start to work on it. I mean, I can do that because I'm financing the whole thing. So I've got it pegged out for 100 episodes, and I know exactly what I'm going to do and how I'm going to do it and what the risks are.

How long will the episodes be?
They're an hour. It's a regular live-action TV series — you know, Law & Order. [Laughs and waits a beat] I hope.

Bryan^H · 03-18-2008, 08:16 PM

Thanks Oscar.
The one series I have been looking forward to since I first heard about it in 2006. It will be great to see different characters in the Star Wars universe.

Bob_S. · 03-19-2008, 10:12 AM

I hope it's not TOO separate from the movies. I mean I expect to see occassional storm/clone troopers, Jedi in hiding, a young Boba Fett and hopfully a May sweep appearance by Darth Vader at some point in the series.

Corey3rd · 03-19-2008, 10:44 AM

will Bea Arthur return as her character from the Star Wars Holiday Special?

Jerome Grate · 03-19-2008, 01:53 PM

Sounds like to me around 2009 before we see anything as to a live series. He really is busy though.

**HTF Ads**

Mark Talmadge · 03-19-2008, 07:03 PM

Can somebody move this topic to the correct forum. Discussion about TV Show programming does not belong in the DVD forums ...

Please read the forum descriptions before posting your topics.

TravisR · 03-19-2008, 11:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mark Talmadge

Can somebody move this topic to the correct forum. Discussion about TV Show programming does not belong in the DVD forums ...

Please read the forum descriptions before posting your topics.

Send a PM to one of the admins.

oscar_merkx · 04-05-2008, 07:04 PM

Star Wars: The Clone Wars | George Lucas: The Clone Wars Q&A

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Why now? Why was now the right time to bring Star Wars to animation?

This is a project we've actually been working on since the end of Revenge of the Sith, I've worked in animation before with Steven [Spielberg] in A Land Before Time, John Korty on a film [Twice Upon a Time] and a few other things. I love animation. I started out in film school in animation, and I felt it was time to explore that medium, and then at the same time be able to explore a part of Star Wars that is so vast that you can't deal with the Luke Skywalker / Anakin Skywalker saga... you get to deal a little bit more with the minutiae of the Clone Wars.

Clearly this has a different look than anything that's come before. Can you share with us the method you went ahead to do this, and the thinking behind the design of The Clone Wars and also the design of the characters?

In order to create The Clone Wars, I had to develop a whole new studio from scratch. We've really been able to advance our animation ambitions. When it comes to the look and feel of The Clone Wars project, I wanted to do something that was in the realm of anime, design-wise, but still different. So I said, "How can we do this along with a strong storytelling sensibility?"
I have a tendency that --- just like with Star Wars, which is based in the 1930s Republic Saturday matinee serials, or Indiana Jones which is based on the same thing -- I wanted to give it a look and the feel of something that's from the past. So everybody was fairly amused in the animation community that we picked Gerry Anderson and Thunderbirds to be our inspiration. It has a very stylized look. I didn't want it to look like Beowulf, which we could've done, or The Incredibles, and when you're doing animation about live action actors and everyone knows what they look like, you really do have to come up with a sophisticated and dynamic caricature of these people.

A lot of people are excited about the new characters that you've incorporated into the storyline, great new good guys and great new villains.

We added a new character. We needed to change the dynamic between Obi-Wan the mentor and Anakin the Padawan, which is where we left them. That's how they entered the Clone Wars. We wanted to make that relationship become more dynamic... sort of like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. They're now equal. They're now partners. They're now working together.
But we really wanted to have that Padawan-mentor relationship, so we gave the most unlikely person a Padawan, which is Anakin, and we made the Padawan a girl. She's very feisty. She's very outgoing and independent-minded, which gives Anakin a real challenge, because he's sort of like that too. He's trying to clean up his act by teaching her to settle down and think and not be so aggressive.

She gets in her share of action.
She's a great character. She's turned out really fantastic.

oscar_merkx · 04-05-2008, 07:06 PM

Moving Forward, The Force Is With Cartoon Network - Animation - ENewsI.com

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Star Wars: The Clone Wars will anchor this strategy with fantasy/adventure on Friday nights, the network announced, along with the new animated action series from Warner. Animation, Batman: The Brave and the Bold; Ben 10: Alien Force; and the previously announced The Secret Saturdays

SD_Brian · 04-06-2008, 12:01 AM

Did anybody else cringe when they read the part about Annakin's new, sassy female sidekick?

Greg_S_H · 04-06-2008, 01:03 AM

The timeframe seems to be fairly covered. Does this padawan contradict what has been seen in EU books and comics? Not that it matters, since Lucas overrides that.