If your earliest memory of Star Wars is the sequel trilogy, then there’s a good chance that you’ve never heard about the lost live-action series George Lucas was developing in the early 2000s titled Star Wars: Underworld.
New details about the canceled series were recently revealed by producer Rick McCallum during an interview on The Young Indy Chronicles podcast (via Pop Culture News). Here’s what he had to say:
“I think we had over 60 scripts, third draft scripts, again the most wonderful writers in the world on it,” began McCallum. “These were dark. They were sexy, they were violent, they were just absolutely wonderful. Wonderful, complicated … challenging. I mean, it would have blown up the whole Star Wars universe … And Disney definitely would’ve never offered to buy Star Wars from George. It’s one of the great disappointments of our life.”
Spearheaded by Lucas, Star Wars: Underworld was set to explore the criminal underbelly of Coruscant, offering a darker, grittier take on the galaxy far, far away. Unfortunately, the one thing standing in the way of getting the project off the ground was the budget, with McCallum noting that each episode would have cost roughly $40 million due to the technology needed to bring each episode to life.
With 60 episodes basically written and another 40 planned beyond that, a studio or network would have needed to shell out a production budget of $4 billion. Lucas also wanted John Williams to compose the music for all episodes. Back then, HBO was the only company with the financial capability and prestige to produce Star Wars: Underworld at this scale.
A meeting was scheduled with then-CEO Chris Albrecht at Skywalker Ranch, but the night before it was set to take place, he was let go by HBO after being arrested in Las Vegas for choking his girlfriend in a parking lot. However, that wasn’t the end of Underworld on HBO. McCallum revealed that they toyed with telling HBO that the company could be part of the next Star Wars or Indiana Jones film if they’d produce the $40 million pilot. However, since we’re living in 2025, it’s clear that those plans were never realized.
A casualty of Underworld never materializing was the LucasArts video game Star Wars 1313, which was directly linked to the proposed live-action series. 1313 would have followed Boba Fett as he navigated the criminal depths of Coruscant’s Level 1313. However, the game was shelved shortly after releasing a demo and footage at E3 2012.
While neither project will likely be revived under the Disney era of Star Wars, fans can watch the test footage for Underworld and the demo for 1313 below.
Are you sad that Star Wars: Underworld was never produced? How do you think the Star Wars franchise would look today if HBO had made the series?
