Star Wars Underworld is one of those projects fans of the franchise have never stopped talking about, even though they have never actually seen it (and likely never will). That's probably why we're still hearing about it all these years later -- and why we finally have some possible answers to the age-old question: Why did this never actually happen?
Underworld was supposed to be a George Lucas-created television series that, three decades ago, would have been unlike anything fans of a galaxy far, far away had ever seen. In a recent interview on the Young Indy Chronicles podcast, however, Lucas's then-producer Rick McCallum shared that while the up to 60 scripts never moved beyond that, it wasn't because they lacked in quality. Quite the opposite, actually.
"It’s one of the great disappointments of our life," he said about the scrapped Star Wars series. "We had ... the most wonderful writers in the world on it. Just a phenomenal group of talent. But the problem was each episode was bigger than the films."
And why was that such a problem, you might be wondering? A bigger scale, a more sinister tone -- things Star Wars fans might have loved even more than what the original trilogy gave them. But something that good had to be too good to be true, and in a way it was. Thirty years ago, a show costing as much as that would have never been picked up. We're talking billions of dollars minimum across the series.
Today, in the all-too-familiar streaming age, a single episode of Rings of Power or Stranger Things might cost $10 million or more. We're beginning to not even question that anymore. But decades ago, when this project might have been underway, the industry simply didn't make shows with those kinds of budgets. It may have been possible now with today's resources, but back then, averaging $40 million per episode was an instant no-go.
So it's true -- the reason we didn't get a show like this at the time was strictly business. If something is going to cost too much to make and audience reception is uncertain, networks -- streaming or otherwise -- aren't going to pick it up. If it's not guaranteed to be profitable or a network isn't willing to take the risk, those scripts are going to remain just that.
Even though we'll never get Star Wars Underworld, at least we're now getting an endless stream of Star Wars content year-round across mediums. That was unheard of, seemingly impossible 30 years ago. Look how far we've come -- and how far there still might be to go.