Don’t Expect a Live-Action Star Wars Television Show Anytime Soon
With Star Wars: The Force Awakens breathing life into the Star Wars franchise, many fans believed Disney had plans to bring a live-action Star Wars show to Netflix, but that doesn’t look like it’s happening anytime soon…
In a recent op-ed piece, Collider‘s Dave Trumbore discussed the long lamented Star Wars live-action project Star Wars Underworld: A project long worked on by George Lucas, yet never brought to fruition, and seemingly forever abandoned. According to Collider, in 2005 George Lucas decided to develop what he called a gritty and ambitious hour-long drama in the Star Wars universe. Unfortunately, the show ran into its share of delays, thanks to a veritable ton of digital animation Underworld would have required, and the budgetary expense that Lucas and his producer Rick McCallum neither had the finances nor the technology to handle.
Many fans thought that once Disney acquired Lucasfilm, the project of Star Wars Underworld would once again be put back in the spotlight, much like Disney has done with its Marvel entities on Netflix (Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage). However, according to collider, Netflix president Paul Lee had this to say about where Disney’s head is, in regards to Star Wars:
"“They are focused on their movies, so we don’t have any plans at the moment.”"
That would seem to be the definitive word on the subject, for the moment. Especially since as we’ve mentioned, Disney already has a deal with Netflix to stream Marvel’s live-action shows, and Star Wars: The Clone Wars currently resides there, as well. There is one last thing that Collider’s article presents as proof that Disney is not in the business of doing a live-action Star Wars television show, for the nonce.
It has to do with J.J. Abrams. Although Abrams is finished with his stint as the director of The Force Awakens, he still has helped to write the outlines for Episodes VIII and IX.
"“Since my TV deal is at [Warner Bros.] it is unlikely that [my production company] Bad Robot will be involved in any Star Wars television projects.”"
That means that if Disney were to suddenly find themselves available to produce live-action streaming television, then J.J. Abrams would not be able to be involved in any fashion whatsoever. Not intellectually, not in deed, not in action. This means any characters that J.J. created could not be involved in the show, so any The Force Awakens characters would be out. It would be as if Abrams hands on the franchise never existed…and I for one, do not want to see that happen.