Star Wars: Underworld

Star Wars: Underworld is said to be set primarily in the Coruscant Underworld (which was briefly glimpsed during Star Wars: Episode II Attack of the Clones), in the time period between Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith and Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope. It is during this period that the Galactic Empire rises to ultimate power throughout the galaxy. In 2005, George Lucas told Celebration III audiences that the show would not focus on any characters from the films, but that some of them could appear; "A lot of the issues from the films are connected, but you won't necessarily see a lot of the people that are connected." He later described the show as "bare-bones" and "action-heavy," and explained that it would depict what the inhabitants of the Star Wars galaxy do for entertainment.

Producer Rick McCallum commented on the plot of the series: "[Lucas] envisions somewhere like 100 hours between Episode III and Episode IV with a lot of characters that we haven't met that have been developed in some of the novels and other things. We are really excited about that. Finally, we could have the opportunity to answer everybody's questions once and for all by the time we finish the series."; "It is going to be much darker, grittier. It's much more character-based"; "Think about bounty hunter, that's all I can tell you." He also called it "Deadwood in space" and "Empire on steroids," and compared it to The Godfather. Lucasfilm's Stephen J. Sansweet also described the series as revealing the "greasy, seamy underbelly of Star Wars." Writer Ronald D. Moore said that it would've generally followed one overarching story, and described it as "...lots of action, lots of sets, and huge set pieces. Just much bigger than what you would normally do in a television show."

According to Dan Wasson, project leader for the Wii version of the Star Wars: The Force Unleashed video game, the TV series may contain elements from the overall Star Wars: The Force Unleashed multimedia project. In 2014, Stephen Scaia revealed in his Kickstarter campaign that he had been a writer for the series, and was involved in several story elements, including Lando Calrissian losing the Millennium Falcon to Han Solo, Solo and Chewbacca's first meeting, as well as an action scene with Boba Fett.

The series was expected to feature minor characters from both the films and the Expanded Universe—with possible cameos by some of the main characters. Lucas: "The Emperor and Darth Vader are heard about—people talk about them—but you never see them because it doesn't take place where they actually are. There are stormtroopers and all that, but there are no Jedis." However, as the show was being written, some of these characters appeared in the scripts. Former LucasArts developer Cory Barlog revealed he read Underworld scripts at Skywalker Ranch for episodes featuring Palpatine, where "They made the Emperor a sympathetic figure who was wronged by this […] heartless woman. She's this hardcore gangster, and she just totally destroyed him as a person. I almost cried while reading this. This is the Emperor, the lightning out of the fingers Emperor. That's something magical". Writer Ronald D. Moore said that Vader "was going to show up for a big two-part episode where there was this big uprising happening, and there was a crack-down on things that were happening on Coruscant. Vader shows up and is kind of like, 'We're gonna stop all this shit right now.'"

Lucas had originally written a scene for Revenge of the Sith involving the Expanded Universe character Quinlan Vos, but the character received only a mention in the final film. Lucas himself later instructed the writers of the Star Wars: Republic comic book series to not kill off the character. This has led some fans to speculate that Vos may play a role in the series, although Republic writer Randy Stradley later clarified that he wasn't sure if the character would have appeared and had heard that a different character to Vos might have appeared. In an interview in the November 2005 edition of the UK magazine Total Film magazine, McCallum was asked "How can Leia claim to remember her mother when Padmé dies in childbirth in Sith?," to which he replied "I think that could only be answered in the television series." After being impressed by her work on The Han Solo Trilogy, Lucasfilm asked A. C. Crispin for her ideas on possible further books. She proposed a book series that would have focused on Leia between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope, but "Lucasfilm didn't approve the idea of a Leia backstory because they want to keep that era of the SW continuity untouched for the television series they're considering." Karen Traviss was to write a novel involving Boba Fett, but the project was reportedly canceled because of possible conflicts with the TV series.

Multiple actors from the films had expressed interest in reprising their roles: Jeremy Bulloch (Boba Fett), Jay Laga'aia (Gregar Typho), Daniel Logan (young Boba Fett), Peter Mayhew (Chewbacca), and Ian McDiarmid (The Emperor). For a time, Logan underwent physical training with Ray Park (Darth Maul), in anticipation of reprising his role as Boba Fett, while in the other hand, Bulloch also expressed interest in play an alter ego of Boba Fett, as he thought that Logan would play him in the series due his age. The Phantom Menace actors Andrew Secombe, Lewis MacLeod and Christian Simpson had also expressed interest in reprising their roles as Watto, Sebulba and Gavyn Sykes, respectively, for the series. On the other hand, however, Billy Dee Williams refused to reprise his role as Lando Calrissian, nor play the character's uncle, although he hinted in 2005 that he could return to play Lando as an older man, as he presumably didn't know in which place of the timeline the series would be set. In 2006, Toby Philpott, who co-puppeted Jabba the Hutt in Return of the Jedi, doubted very much that he could reprise his role, as he supposed that the series would be made in the USA. Conversely, that same year, various actors who appeared in Jedi had expressed interest in reprising their roles for the series: Tim Dry (J'Quille), Mercedes Ngoh (Rystáll Sant, in the film's 1997 DVD release), Mike Quinn (Nien Nunb, Ten Numb, Wokling, Ree-Yees, Wol Cabasshite and Sy Snootles), and Simon Williamson (Max Rebo and Jubnuk). In January 2010, Paul Blake stated during an interview that he would like very much to reprise his role as Greedo in the series, although he hadn't been contacted so far to do so.

Members of the cast outside the films (or those who played minor roles in the films) had also expressed interest in appearing in the series; Star Wars: The Force Unleashed actor Sam Witwer wanted to appear (possibly as Galen Marek, Vader's secret apprentice), and hinted in an interview that he would indeed be involved. Likewise, Adrienne Wilkinson showed interest in seeing her character of Maris Brood in the series. In 2007, Shannon McRandle, who modeled as Mara Jade Skywalker for the Star Wars card games, expressed her desire to audition to play the role of Jade in the series in order to develop her between Episodes III and IV. On March 9, 2009, actress Rose Byrne, who appeared in Attack of the Clones, told MTV that casting for the series was underway, and that some of her friends had auditioned for roles. However, Star Wars Insider 109 claimed that scripts had yet to be written at that point, and would precede any earnest casting efforts, contradicting Byrne's claims.

Prior to the release of the original Star Wars film in 1977, rumors began circulating that a TV series would be produced based on the film. Although such a project never came to fruition, George Lucas became involved (to varying degrees) in three live-action Star Wars television productions: The Star Wars Holiday Special, Caravan of Courage: An Ewok Adventure, and Ewoks: The Battle for Endor. While the Holiday Special was a critical failure, both Ewok films won Emmy awards and had a positive critical reaction. In each case, the networks saw the productions as backdoor pilots for possible television series, though Lucas wasn't interested. From 1992 to 1996, Lucas produced the television series The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, during which he developed a love of making television.

In late 2004, rumors again began to circulate of a live-action Star Wars series in development. Lucas officially announced his plans for a live-action Star Wars television series at Celebration III, saying "We probably won't start that until sometime next year." He also spoke of plans for a new animated television series set during the Clone Wars, which he expected to be produced first. Also at the event, Rick McCallum elaborated; "He [George] envisions somewhere like 100 hours between Episode III and Episode IV." However, at 2007's Celebration Europe, McCallum claimed that the plan was to produce "up to 400 episodes". He also revealed that "I've had three conceptual artists working on it now for about seven months." The original plan was for the first season to be entirely written and produced before shopping the series to broadcast networks; After a network was committed, work would commence on the following seasons.

Lucas and McCallum (and, according to writer Matthew Grahman, the show's associate producer Steve Irwin) interviewed over 200 prospective "writers of real significance" from all over the world—including England, the United States, Paris, Prague, Budapest and Australia. McCallum remarked, "It's about who's talented, who's got the strength to challenge George and also, much more importantly, what's the dynamics of the five or six people. If they can let go of their ego and work toward a specific goal. Sometimes you think 'I'm sick of writing alone.' Everyone has their ebb and flow. We're trying to get everyone in their peak." Writers from Battlestar Galactica, Heroes, and Lost, as well as those from the Star Wars books and comics, were considered as part of the final interview process in late 2007. In the end, six writers were hired—including , Chris Chibnall, , Tony McNamara, Fiona Seres, , Ronald D. Moore, and Stephen Scaia—and were expected to start work in November 2007. Current Doctor Who writer Russell T Davies was asked to write for the show, but turned it down due to his desire to do his own projects in a different style to both franchises; however, he did claim to be jealous of whoever ended up being hired.

After the writers were hired, story outlines took shape over the next three months. McCallum expected the first writing conference to occur in late 2007, and sessions had began by August 2008. The writers worked closely with the art department (including concept artist Erik Tiemens), which had been working to design sets, environments, vehicles and aliens since 2007. Ronald D. Moore commented on the writing process: "The scripts were written as if money was no object. George was like, 'Don't worry about it.' [Producer Rick McCallum] would groan and put his head in his hands periodically. So for us it was like, 'Okay, f–k it, let's write whatever we want.'" … "His mandate on the scripts were: 'Think big. Don't have any worries. We'll make it. Budget is no object.' So we wrote these gigantic pieces." Lucas originally wanted a season's worth of 25 scripts, but eventually extended this to 50 (i.e. two season's worth, with 25 episodes per season). Writer Matthew Graham described the writers as two teams that Lucas played off of each other: Those who were big Star Wars fans, and those who weren't as familiar with the franchise. Moore later told collider.com: "And what happened was, you know, we wrote the scripts and then George said 'OK, this is enough for now, and then I'll get back to you. I want to look into all the production things.' And then time went by and like a year or something after that is when he sold Lucasfilm to Disney." In the end, fifty hours worth of episodes plus a "movie-of-the-week" were written, all in various stages of development. In a January 2012 interview with IGN, McCallum revealed the working title to be Underworld, which had originally served as the working title for an early concept for Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. McCallum denied this the next day, though he later told Entertainment Weekly that it was indeed the working title.

McCallum expected that he and Lucas would approach the series in a similar manner as they had The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. Like on that earlier series, they hoped to give each episode the look of a feature film, with feature-level production values and visual effects on a television budget. Lucas also talked of using the show as a template for how he would approach "more personal films" that he hoped to create. In 2005, Lucas stated his intentions to shoot the series using consumer-level cameras, which McCallum said would be high-definition cameras. In late 2009, Lucas and McCallum invited filmmaker Phillip Bloom to Skywalker Ranch to advise on using different types of cameras for pick-up photography on Red Tails, and for the live-action series. Lucas expected that, in producing the show, he would "do what would typically cost $20 million, for $1 million." According to IESB, McCallum has said that each episode will have a budget of 2-4 million dollars.

Principal photography was planned to take place all around the world, with a likely base in Sydney, Australia. In respect to the stunts, prequel trilogy stunt coordinators Nick Gillard and Kyle Rowling expressed interest in 2006 in working on the series as fighting directors. On the other hand, prequel trilogy special effects technician Matt Sloan hinted the possibility to return in order to do the series' visual effects. McCallum originally expected production to begin in either 2008 or 2009. He expected the first season to consist of thirteen-to-sixteen episodes, shot over a one-to-two-year time period. In March 2009, preliminary casting was still underway; a Lucasfilm representative claimed at the time that official casting would begin once the scripts were complete and that the series would not go into production until 2010. In a June 2011 interview, McCallum said that the show would most likely be filmed in the Czech Republic, a location used multiple times by LucasFilm for various productions. Reportedly, Jim Marquand, son of Star Wars: Episode VI Return of the Jedi director Richard Marquand, was hired as one of the directors. McCallum expected that each episode of the series would have its own original score, and hoped that John Williams would return as composer.

At a 2010 screening of The Empire Strikes Back in Chicago, Illinois, Lucas announced that the series was "on hold" due to budget concerns. Lucas and McCallum later elaborated that the scripts were prohibitively expensive for television, and that the show was put on hold in order to wait on technology to develop to the point that costs could be kept relatively low. Lucas had long planned to build an expansion to his Lucas Valley property called Grady Ranch, which would have been "a digital media production facility for movies and television." However, in early 2012, Marin County rejected the project due to concerns over traffic and noise. According to Pablo Hidalgo, this marked the end of the show as a viable project. In June 2012, McCallum also credited the logistics of the television market as one of the reasons for shelving Underworld.

On October 30, 2012, The Walt Disney Company announced an agreement to acquire Lucasfilm, including the rights to the Star Wars franchise. In a conference call following the press release, Disney expressed interest in the potential of a Star Wars television series, but did not go into details. Soon after, it was announced that McCallum had retired from Lucasfilm. In January 2013, ABC president Paul Lee told Entertainment Weekly that the live-action Star Wars series was being reevaluated for production. This was confirmed by Bob Iger that March. That August, Lee again visited the topic of a Star Wars live-action series; "We've started conversations. I'd love to go there. I'm a particular fan of Lucasfilm. It's an amazing world". Other ABC executives, however, later reiterated this in 2016 and 2017. In December 2015, Kathleen Kennedy told Slashfilm that Lucasfilm had been looking at the material for both Underworld and the canceled video game Star Wars: 1313, and that those projects may still be developed. In August 2017, Disney announced that it was removing its Star Wars and Marvel content from Netflix, in favor of its own new streaming service that would also include new content created exclusively for the service. On November 9, 2017, Variety reported that Disney chairman and CEO Bob Iger revealed during the company's quarterly earnings call that Disney was planning a live-action Star Wars TV series entitled The Mandalorian, which debuted at the end of 2019 on its streaming service Disney+. This series, together with additional Star Wars series that followed it such as The Book of Boba Fett, was produced with a new technology called Stagecraft (informally known as "The Volume"). Variety observed that Stagecraft fulfilled Lucas' desire for a cost-effective technology to produce a Star Wars TV show.

In a 2006 interview, Steve Sansweet said that he expected the series to be released "toward the end of the decade." He gave the time period until release to be "about 3 years." A teaser image for the series was shown at Toy Fair 2007, advertising the next three years of Star Wars: the 30th anniversary of the saga and the release of The Force Unleashed in 2007 (which was ultimately pushed back to 2008), the new Clone Wars TV series in 2008, and the live-action series in 2009. Rick McCallum expected the series to be released simultaneously worldwide and to be broadcast on cable. Both Disney and News Corp were rumored to have shown interest in acquiring broadcast rights for the show, with the former offering ABC and ABC Family and the latter offering FOX and FX. Additionally, Lucas voiced his interest in distributing the series via the Internet—specifically StarWars.com.

At 2005's Celebration III, Lucas told audiences that if the live-action series (along with the new Clone Wars animated series) was successful, more series could follow. At 2007's Celebration Europe, McCallum explained that "One of the ideas is that we'll have multiple series going on in about two or three years' time." McCallum said he hoped that after the series' second or third year, a character could have their own spin-off series, and by the fourth or fifth year, the production staff could have at least five separate series running. Lucas described the series as "one show that will split into four shows, focusing on different characters."

Comments from Lucasfilm employees (such as Sue Rostoni and Jim Ward) had hinted that tie-ins such as spin-off books and video games were planned. The canceled video game Star Wars: 1313 was originally conceived as a direct tie-in to Underworld; After Underworld was postponed in 2010 due to budget constraints, 1313 was altered to be its own distinct project. However, at George Lucas's request, the final game was to have still taken inspiration from elements of Underworld. The Clone Wars introduced Level 1313, as well as the character Saw Gerrera, who was also conceived for Underworld. According to James Luceno, Palpatine's first name, "Sheev" (which he revealed in his 2014 novel Tarkin), was reportedly created by Lucas for the show.

The animated series Star Wars Rebels was influenced by ideas developed by Lucas for Underworld. The Church of the Force—a background element related to Lor San Tekka from Star Wars: Episode VII The Force Awakens—was created by Lucas for Underworld. John Knoll originally developed the concept for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story in the mid-2000s during the production of the prequel trilogy, in the hopes that it could be an episode of the live-action series. After the release of the prequels, Zack Snyder was also developing a Star Wars story with Lucasfilm; After the Disney purchase, Snyder developed the project into the film Rebel Moon (2023). The film Solo: A Star Wars Story showed the first meeting between Han Solo and Chewbacca along Lando Calrissian losing the Millennium Falcon to Solo, two stories which were originally planned for Underworld. Kratos's character arc from the 2018 God of War video game was inspired by the unproduced Underworld scripts. Former LucasArts developer revealed that he read scripts at Skywalker Ranch that were written by writers of 24 and The Shield. According to Barlog, "They made the Emperor a sympathetic figure who was wronged by this [...] heartless woman. She's this hardcore gangster, and she just totally destroyed him as a person. I almost cried while reading this. This is the Emperor, the lightning out of the fingers Emperor. That's something magical."

Test footage of Underworld that Stargate Studios created as a proof of concept in 2010 was discovered on Stargate Studios' Vimeo page in January 2020. It depicts a female Rebel agent stealing plans for an Imperial Star Destroyer and setting off an electrical attack on Imperial stormtroopers.