Is Disney and Lucasfilm working on a new Star Wars TV show project? According to ABC's Entertainment President Channing Dungey, there are ongoing talks about making the idea into a reality.
“Oh, as a fan, I would absolutely love to say ‘Yes,’” said Dungey during the Television Critics’ Association’s summer press tour Thursday. “The conversations with Lucas, we have had conversations with them and will continue to have conversations with them. I think it would be wonderful if we could find a way to extend that brand into our programming.”
The talks are still in its early stages, so there are no officially confirmed details just yet. In fact, it has not been announced whether the show will be a brand-new live action series or if it will be an animated show like Star Wars: The Clone Wars and the current Star Wars Rebels series. That said, given that Star Wars Rebels is still on the air and the new Star Wars on ABC is intended for a primetime slot, it certainly makes more sense to have a traditional live-action format.
Via EW, the studio had pitched for a live-action Star Wars series before. At the time, Lucasfilm producer Rick McCallum brought in writers including Ron Moore of Battlestare Galactica to create a script. The story was supposedly set between the original Star Wars trilogy and the later prequels and followed the story of rival mob families that are desperately ving for control over the "seedy underside" of Coruscant. Ultimately, the project was deemed too expensive and even HBO passed on the project because of the small ownership stake.
The rumored ABC Star Wars project will likely face similar challenges because fans of the franchise come to expect high quality and production value. Stay tuned as we hope to learn more details about Star Wars on ABC in the months ahead.
“It’s all a little bit hush, hush…That company [Lucasfilm] exists under a huge banner of secrecy. If you thought Marvel was secretive, Lucas takes it to a whole other level… We don’t have an official timeline yet.”
