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Star Wars Underworld test footage from 2010

kitik

Fleet Captain
Fleet Captain
Pretty cool stuff.

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I can understand why this tv show never got made, but I sure would have watched it.

The technology they used to make that is actually pretty impressive for the time.
 
I would love a remake of Blade Runner in the Star Wars universe :) Which is what this looks like to me.
 
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Nice to see that it's not just storm troopers who can't hit what they're shooting at from 5 feet away. LOL.
 
That was pretty cool. I don't know if the show would have been as good as The Mandalorian, but it was nice to get a clear example of the kind of stuff they had in mind for it.
 
It is a very cool find.
Video was uploaded to a Vimeo account 9 years ago, by Stargate Studios, who had to take it down today (OP posted YouTube link.)

Certainly has that sweet Blade Runner vibe that's been missing from Disney Star Wars.

It would be so great if Mando went to Coruscant in one episode, just to get a glimpse of what it might look like in that series, i.e. post Empire.
 
It would be so great if Mando went to Coruscant in one episode, just to get a glimpse of what it might look like in that series, i.e. post Empire.
I was thinking the same thing. Baby's home is prob in the opposite direction, but Star Wars hyperdrive kicks ass so we could get back out yonder quick.
 
IIRC, Lucas said they had a whole bunch of scripts (at least 20 and treatments for another 80, I think?) for this ready to go and the only reason it didn't go any further was simply because the tech wasn't economically viable for a weekly TV show.

Since the tech has now more or less caught up (not that it's cheap exactly, but it's now feasible at least) what interests me is those scripts. Do Disney own them now, or is there some weird rights or royalties issue that would prevent (or at least discourage) LF from just dusting them off and having another go at it?

As discussed in another thread, Lucas has recently said he'd be willing to come back if given full creative control, and this show was his baby, so assuming there's nothing that'll directly clash with what's been done since, I'd be interested to see it finally given a chance.

I mean if nothing else they may be able to just slip the scripts to Marvel and adapt it into a comic book series.
 
I think I read they had borrowed some ideas from this for other later projects so I don't know if it would make sense to ever make this series but I would love to see it.
 
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IIRC, Lucas said they had a whole bunch of scripts (at least 20 and treatments for another 80, I think?) for this ready to go and the only reason it didn't go any further was simply because the tech wasn't economically viable for a weekly TV show.

Since the tech has now more or less caught up (not that it's cheap exactly, but it's now feasible at least) what interests me is those scripts. Do Disney own them now, or is there some weird rights or royalties issue that would prevent (or at least discourage) LF from just dusting them off and having another go at it?

As discussed in another thread, Lucas has recently said he'd be willing to come back if given full creative control, and this show was his baby, so assuming there's nothing that'll directly clash with what's been done since, I'd be interested to see it finally given a chance.

I mean if nothing else they may be able to just slip the scripts to Marvel and adapt it into a comic book series.
You beat me to it. I just came into the thread to ask this exact same question.
 
I think I read they had borrowed some ideas from this for other projects sense so I don't know if it would make sense to ever make this series but I would love to see it.
Yeah Saw Gerrera started as a character from Underworld, Palpatine's first name of 'Sheev' also came from it.

https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Wars:_Underworld

The cancelled Star Wars: 1313 game also started development as a tie in for Underworld.
Yeah, I know it's been partially mined already, but from what I can tell it's mostly incidental stuff and background material. The look of the deep levels, the local police and all of that was used in later season of TCW. None of that is a problem since it's all world building stuff, not plot related.

The Saw stuff seems to have been developed in parallel with his appearance in TCW, so his role in the series would have been an extension of that rather than an either/or situation. Of course we don't know to what extent, Rebels and Rogue One might interfere with whatever the plot of his episodes might be; worse case scenario, that just make "Saw" in those scripts into a new character. Or it might just be fine as is.
 
That's indeed some impressive digital set/set extension work, but what's not pictured, probably, is the dozens and dozens of hours matching and polishing it all up into the finished product.
 
I don't think anyone's pretending that was meant to be an instantaneously perfect real-time integration of digital assets. I mean this is almost a decade old and the estimated bill for this show came out at around 20 million per episode (hence it didn't go into production.)
There does appear to be some real time rendering going on, though you can see in the inset that just the environment, not animation elements like the speeder, and yeah, the quality probably isn't any where near final. But that's probably not the point; that's most likely there for the camera operator's reference, which is also what they're doing these days on modern mo-cap stages, using gaming engine software.
 
IIRC, Lucas said they had a whole bunch of scripts (at least 20 and treatments for another 80, I think?) for this ready to go and the only reason it didn't go any further was simply because the tech wasn't economically viable for a weekly TV show.

Since the tech has now more or less caught up (not that it's cheap exactly, but it's now feasible at least) what interests me is those scripts. Do Disney own them now, or is there some weird rights or royalties issue that would prevent (or at least discourage) LF from just dusting them off and having another go at it?

As discussed in another thread, Lucas has recently said he'd be willing to come back if given full creative control, and this show was his baby, so assuming there's nothing that'll directly clash with what's been done since, I'd be interested to see it finally given a chance.

I mean if nothing else they may be able to just slip the scripts to Marvel and adapt it into a comic book series.

The interesting thing about those scripts is that 50(!) out of a planned 100-ish were written during the 2007-2008 Writers Strike by several unnamed "name" genre TV writers. The only one who's officially come out and admitted to being one of them is Ronald D. Moore. I'd kill to be able to read those scripts.
Even many working in Hollywood don’t realize a live-action Star Wars TV series has been sitting on the shelf the past few years. The project was commissioned by longtime Lucasfilm producer Rick McCallum, who enlisted writers such as Battlestar Galactica‘s Ron Moore and swore them to NDA secrecy on the plot details (more on the show’s storyline below). Fifty scripts were written. McCallum once called the scripts the most “provocative, bold and daring material that we’ve ever done.”

And then … nothing.
https://ew.com/article/2013/01/10/star-wars-live-action-tv-series-3/
 
If the show is definitely never going to get made, I would love to see the scripts released publicly or even adapted into a comic like they did with Lucas's first draft of the original movie. If they really are done, then it would be a shame to see them just sit around unused and unreleased until they turn to dust.
 
Some concept art from this show is going around.
Sure is a lot of leaked stuff going around lately.
 
If the show is definitely never going to get made, I would love to see the scripts released publicly or even adapted into a comic like they did with Lucas's first draft of the original movie. If they really are done, then it would be a shame to see them just sit around unused and unreleased until they turn to dust.

I'd like to see that too.

I can't say I was impressed with the story footage I saw but it was test footage so that's fine. But it was pretty cool to see and I appreciate the Blade Runner look to it.
 
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