A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away… there was going to be a live-action Star Wars television series. Yes, back in 2005, George Lucas announced his intentions to develop Star Wars: Underworld, an hour-long format with over 100 episodes planned. Lucas hired dozens of writers and art designers to bring the proposed series to life, but ultimately it fell apart, with the dagger in the heart coming via Disney’s 2012 buyout of Lucasfilm.
The future of Star Wars: Underworld looks grim, to say the least, but it’s not like Disney doesn’t have the money or power to pull it off. That being said, it’s fun to imagine what a live-action Star Wars series would look like. The show would have taken place in between the events of Episode III: Revenge of the Sith and Episode IV: A New Hope, meaning some familiar faces would have featured.
One of the prime antagonists is a man we all know and hate -- Emperor Palpatine. But according to a new interview with VentureBeat, the notorious Sith lord wouldn’t have been so bad after all. Check out what former LucasArts employee Cory Barlog, who got his hands on some of the scripts for Star Wars: Underworld, had to say:
A character can go from one extreme to another. They can go from a character you loathe to a character you love and root for.
Probably the really small beginnings of this idea, the germination of this — when I was working at Lucas[Arts], I was allowed to go up to the ranch and read the scripts for the [canceled live-action Star Wars] TV show. It was the most mind-blowing thing I’d ever experienced. I cared about the Emperor. They made the Emperor a sympathetic figure who was wronged by this fucking 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. The writers who worked on that, guys from The Shield and 24, these were excellent writers.
Man, pretty intense stuff that has me wondering WHY WAS THIS SHOW NEVER MADE??! If someone can convince me to care about Emperor Palpatine, the shadiest, ugliest, no-good-for-anything Sith lord, then Star Wars: Underworld ’s writer’s room must have boasted some incredible talent.
Perhaps someone at Disney can greenlight Star Wars: Underworld because it sounds pretty LIT. See what I did there? No? Okay then.
