Lucas Reveals Plans for 'Star Wars' TV Series
By Gary Susman, Entertainment Weekly
The soon-to-be-released Star Wars: Episode III -- Revenge of the Sith may be the last Star Wars film, but George Lucas may never be finished tinkering with the franchise or creating spin-off products. Over the weekend, Lucas announced a couple of them himself; both are TV series. In the immediate future, Lucas will be going on TV himself to promote the May 19 release of Sith, meeting with his No. 1 (fictional) fan, The O.C.'s Seth Cohen.
Lucas made a rare appearance at a Star Wars fan convention, Celebration III in Indianapolis, on Saturday. There, he described the two forthcoming TV series. One is an expansion into a 30-minute series of Clone Wars, the series of animated shorts shown on Cartoon Network that chronicles space battles that take place between Episode II and Episode III. "We're going to take that and turn it into a 3-D animated version full series," he said, according to the official Star Wars website. The other, he said, was a live-action drama that would take place between Episode III and Episode IV (i.e., the story told in the original 1977 film). "We're probably not going to start that for about a year," he said. "Like on The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, we want to write all the stories for the entire first season all at once. I'm going to get it started, and hire the show runners and all of that, then I'll probably step away."
Meanwhile, a week before Sith opens, Lucas will play himself in a May 12 visit to The O.C. (Which, not coincidentally, is the show that premiered the Sith trailer a few weeks back.) In the episode, Lucas expresses interest in a graphic novel created by Seth (Adam Brody). Seth is forced to choose between taking Summer (Rachel Bilson) to the prom or letting Zach (Michael Cassidy) take her while he meets Lucas -- and hottie book editor Reed (Marguerite Moreau) -- for dinner. Guess which he chooses?
04/26/2005 08:00 EST
