20th Century Fox, Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones

Lucas wants to film the live action series covering the “dark times” period of Star Wars lore between Episode 3 and Episode 4, in Prague, the capitol of the Czech Republic. He hopes to get a tax break from the government there. The series is intended to elaborate on the rebellion against the Empire whose head is Palpatine, a Sith Lord, (the Jedi’s greatest enemy, an anti-Jedi), but supposedly will not feature either the emperor or Darth Vader. However, there is always the possibility the series will focus on Vader’s hunt for the remaining Jedi that survived the purge in Revenge of the Sith. In any case, the primary characters will not be Jedi but ordinary beings from the Star Wars universe whose roles are usually overshadowed by the pivotal Jedi characters in all of the six movies.

There will be appearances by Obi Wan Kenobi and at least one other Jedi – Quinlan Vos, who never made an appearance in any of the prequels, but is a well known character in Star Wars universe graphic novels. It is unknown if Ewan McGregor will be the one to don the beard and cloak again to reprise his role of Obi Wan from the Prequel movies, but it seems unlikely since he has not been contacted to play the part. Boba Fett will also be a recurring character and Daniel Logan who played the young Boba Fett in Attack of the Clones is being considered to play the adult Boba.

Lucas plans on writing the first season and will then hand it off to a worthy successor, at this time it is unclear who that will be. Not only will there be one Star Wars television show for fans to relish, but eventually there will be several with plots that connect all of them together and tell the story of the dark times mentioned by Obi Wan in the first Star Wars movie ever made, A New Hope.

Rumors abound about whether or not they have started casting calls since George Lucas said he wouldn’t start casting until the script had been written, and it is unclear whether principal filming will take place in Prague or Sydney. However, the series will debut in 2010, a year earlier than planned, so it is likely the script is done and the casting is underway.

Star Wars Live Action series

A live-action TV series set in the “Star Wars” cosmos has been an elusive, tantalizing prospect for years. News of the potential production first surfaced in 2005 while George Lucas was promoting “Revenge of the Sith.” Work on the “Clones Wars” animated feature film and Cartoon Network series, though, took creative precedence. In late 2007, Lucas revealed that he and his team were about to begin writing scripts for the live-action show. Now MTV News has learned that casting for the series is currently underway.

During the junket for the Nicolas Cage thriller “Knowing,” star Rose Byrne let slip that Team Lucas is casting a wide net for actors to join the show. “A lot of my friends have been auditioning for it,” she said.

According to Lucas, the show will focus on minor characters from the saga and be set in the time period between “Revenge of the Sith” (Episode III) and the original “Star Wars” (Episode IV). The action will follow the Rebel Alliance as it slowly gains strength against the Empire. There will be Stormtroopers, but no Jedi or Darth Vader will appear on screen. As he did with the “Clone Wars” series, Lucas will write and shoot an entire year’s worth of episodes before looking for a cable channel on which to air the series.

Thus, with casting just now moving forward, it looks to be quite some time before fans will be able to catch some live-action “Star Wars” on the small screen.

Bryne couldn’t have been more pleased about her time working with Lucas on 2002’s “Attack of the Clones.” “My experience was wonderful,” she said. “George is a great guy. I was just there for a week, standing behind Natalie [Portman] looking very demure and supportive. 95% of the fan mail I get is from ‘Star Wars’ and I’ve never seen them.”

As much as she enjoyed the “Star Wars” experience, Byrne, who was nominated for a Golden Globe for her work on FX’s “Damages,” will not be auditioning for the live-action series. “I’m on a show,” she said. “I don’t know if I look that good in space.”

Who would you like to see cast in a live-action “Star Wars” TV show? Which cable channel would be the best outlet for the series?

Star Wars Live Action series

I think the time has come for a separate thread on the upcoming live action series and there’s some really big news: A director has been chosen for the series (or at least some of the episodes), James Marquand, the son of Richard Marquand who directed Return of the Jedi:

Liverpool Daily Post

Jim Marquand: Star Wars memories and a Scouse sense of humour

Feb 28 2008 by Greg O’Keeffe

Filmmaker Jim Marquand _320

GROWING UP on Hollywood film sets gave Jim Marquand a top-class education in the extraordinary.

Whether it was being drafted-in by his director dad Richard to do stunts for a primadona teenage actor, or playing three different extras in one film, it was all just an average day during school holidays.

But it was when his dad was chosen to direct one of the biggest films of all time, Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi, that his education went into over-drive.

Now Jim, who followed in his father’s directorial footsteps, is in Liverpool – his adopted home for 15 years – to make his second film set in the city.

And the 43-year-old is confident his new project is going to be unforgettable, starting with its title…

Whores With Guns is a comedy which was written by award-winning Scouse comic John Bishop.

Ex-footballer John was approached to write the script for a film competition run by North West Digital Departures.

And he quickly agreed to go ahead when he realised it would mean working with Jim.

Jim, a father of two boys – Tom, nine, and Dan, four – made his directorial debut with Dead Man’s Cards, also filmed in Liverpool.

It so impressed legendary Star Wars creator George Lucas, that he asked Jim to direct episodes of the eagerly-anticipated Star Wars television show next year.

“I’ve got so many vivid memories of the five months I spent on the set of Return Of The Jedi,” recalls Jim. “I was about 18 and spent five fantastic months with dad while he filmed the movie in North California and Pinewood studios.

“I can remember walking onto one set which was the Ewok village, during a break in shooting. All these midget actors who were playing Ewoks had taken their costume heads off and were sat around smoking, drinking tea and reading newspapers. It was surreal.

“I got to know all the cast, too, and can remember Harrison Ford talking about being a carpenter before he got into acting. He was a very down-to-earth bloke.”

Richard Marquand died 10 years ago, but along with his talent behind the camera he passed on a love of Liverpool to his son.

“My dad was from Wales but he was a big fan of Liverpool,” says Jim. “I first came to the city a long time ago from North Wales.

“I just loved it and stayed during the late 80s and 90s. I was born in London and then moved to Boston in the US when I was seven, but I just felt right in Liverpool.

“My dad had his feet firmly on the ground too and never lived in Hollywood permanently, even when he was doing Star Wars

“I’m very excited about the film and things are gathering a real pace now. We will be looking at filming it as soon as possible.”

Jim has relished working with John on the script for Whores With Guns, a satirical comedy about two slacker film fanatics’ desperate plan to screen their movie to a jaded film reviewer, which goes horribly wrong when they are mistaken for international terrorists.

“I met Jim at a viewing for his first film which proved to me the kind of quality you can achieve on a relatively small budget,” says John.

“But it also dawned on me how vital it is to get a smaller film reviewed and into the public eye, and I joked that we could kidnap someone like Jonathan Ross and make him watch it.

“That sparked the idea for this film’s plot and it went from there.

“The main characters are three mates who work in a cinema and one of them has written a film script. He thinks he has written an anti-gun film about the way gun culture is subverting women in society and together they borrow the money to make it.

“But the film ends up being a terrible movie with girls in bikinis and stilettos, who carry machine guns and blow away loads of bad guys. The title is a reflection of those films like Snakes On A Plane and Debbie Does Dallas where you know what you’re getting.

“Everything has gone wrong for the lads, but they have borrowed the money to make it from investors, including a couple of gangsters, and they’ve got to make the film a success or else.”

“Our sales agent in LA rang to say he loved the script and was really keen,” says John who wrote the script in his own Scouse dialect. “The dialogue is all very much in my intonation but it has gone down well and we are in the final stages now.”

The multi-talented comic wrote himself a part in the feature, playing cinema manager (and TA sergeant), Mr Franks, a character who should have audiences in stitches.

“The storyline is partly about how misunderstandings and irrational worries over things like terrorism can snow-ball. The lads don’t intend to but somehow they end up hi-jacking their cinema and the police think they are holding the critic hostage.

“There is a lot of Scouse sarcasm in it and I would like us to use local actors and sets. I want to use people who may not necessarily have made films before. We are hoping to use a great young actress called Ashley Hyland who was in Dead Man’s Cards and gave a brilliant read-through of this script.

“I’m just glad Jim and our producer, Phil Evers, liked the script. I was going to write something called Being Jamie Carragher with me as the main man, but they didn’t buy that!”

April 27 2007

source: toschestation.nl
podcast: toschestation-RickMcCallum.mp3

SUMMARY

• Lucas worked he last 7 to 8 months on Story Arc of the Live-Action Series.
• Character Driven & Different group of characters.
• First episode by end of 2008 so series can start in 2009.

TRANSCRIPT

ToscheStation: Will ”Young Indiana Jones” be used as a blueprint for the upcoming live action Star Wars television series?

Rick McCallum: No, the Star Wars television series will be used as a blueprint for how we’re going to do our own films, the more personal movies George wants to make, how we’re going to use technology to make a movie for 10 or 15 million dollars with a lot of effects in it. Nowadays movies cost a lot of money and it doesn’t work.

Movies are too expensive. It’s about how to change the perimeters of how do you set up the movie, how do you shoot it around the world, how do you make it look big in a more reasonable way. Most people forget that it takes three and a half, four years to make a Star Wars film. It’s long and that is why we are so excited to make the TV series because it’s much more character driven, you make a mistake one week and fix it the next week.

You got this extraordinary story of twenty years between Episode III and IV while Luke is growing up that needs to be explored. So, we are looking forward to it. One of the things we are also looking forward to is finding a new group of talent to work with on feature films very much the same way as we did with Young Indy. Almost everyone that worked on Young Indy stayed with us for seventeen years or longer and some are still with us. Now we’re gonna start off with a new group, the next generation of filmmakers.

ToscheStation: Could you tell us something about the status of the Star Wars television series? Something about the actors maybe?

Rick McCallum: I can’t tell you anything about actors because we’re not there yet. This is a long process to get it right. First of all: where are we going to shoot? Then: who’s going to write? And finally: who’s going to direct? George has been working for the last seven, eight months on the story arc line of where the series goes.

The dream is to do way over one hundred hours of it. If we can get it right, we have some fantastic characters that nobody has ever met before and start a whole other world of Star Wars that comes out every week instead of every three years.

ToscheStation: Will any of the older characters appear in the series?

Rick McCallum: It’s a whole different group of characters.

ToscheStation: When do you expect the first episode will be televised?

Rick McCallum: That’s tough. The TV world is changing a lot. Hopefully we will have finished the first episode by the end of 2008, so that in 2009 it can come out.

ToscheStation: An important question a lot of non-American fans are probably wondering about is if they will have to wait longer to see series in comparison to the American fans? In other words: will it be released worldwide at the same time?

Rick McCallum: Too early too tell, but most likely worldwide. We know we have a large group of fans that don’t want to wait. It’s one of the reasons we push the release dates of our movies so that everyone can see it at the same time.

Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2008 4:30 pm Post subject: Reply with quote
I transcribed the relevant Live-Action Series excerpts. There are some new bits of information i.e. the Episode IV tone of the show and how the two television shows and movies are under the control of Lucas, apart from the novels and other materials.

LUCAS ON THE LIVE-ACTION SERIES

TotalFilm: How far down the line will Star Wars continue in these new incarnations?

Lucas: Clone Wars will probably go for at least five or six seasons which adds up to 200 episodes. Then we have the live-action series, which is going to be a little bit more experimental. It takes place over the 20 years when Luke’s growing up, but it’s not about the Skywalkers or any of that stuff.

Like In Episode IV — you hear about the Emperor, but you don’t actually see him. People live in the Empire, but you don’t see Storm Troopers. It’s a completely different kind of idea, which is risky. But that’s the only reason I’m doing it. Some people will inevitably say. “It’s not what I think of as Star Wars.” So who knows, it may work or it may not.

TotalFilm: Is it really a radical departure?

Lucas: I’d say so. It’s kind of like Episode IV — it’s funny and there’s action, but it’s lot more talky. It’s more of what I would call a soap opera with a bunch of personal dramas in it. It’s not really based on action-adventure films from the ’30s — it’s actually more based on film noir movies from the ’40’s!

TotalFilm: Any casting news?

Lucas: No, that won’t be for a while. We’ve got writers who are currently working on scripts with the art department. First you’ve got to create the characters, because half of them are human and half of them aren’t.

That’s the thing about Star Wars — there’s always two and half years of design work before the production stars. Nobody spends that long in television; people have a tendency to just put t-shirts on actors and call them spacesuits! Or they just use motorcycle helmets and paint them green or something. So we’ve been working on this for about a year now: designing sets, environments, vehicles and aliens…

LUCAS ON THE EXPANDED UNIVERSE

TotalFilm: The Star Wars universe has expanded far beyond the movies. How much leeway do the game makers and novel writers have?

Lucas: They have their own kind of world. There’s three pillars of Star Wars. I’ll probably get in trouble for this but it’s OK!

There’s three pillars: the father, the son and the holy ghost. I’m the father, Howard Roffman [president of Lucas Licensing] is the son and the holy ghost is the fans, this kind of ethereal world of people coming up with all kinds of different ideas and histories. Now these three different pillars don’t always match, but the movies and TV shows are all under my control and they are consistent with themselves.

Howard tries to be consistent but sometimes he goes off on tangents and it’s hard to hold him back. He once said to me that there are two Star Trek universes: there’s the TV show and then there’s all the spin-offs. He said that these were completely different and didn’t have anything to do with each other. So I said, “OK, go ahead.”

In the early days I told them that they couldn’t do anything about how Darth Vader was born, for obvious reasons but otherwise I pretty much let them do whatever they wanted. They created this whole amazing universe that goes on for millions of years!”

TotalFilm: Are you happy for new Star Wars tales to be told after your gone?

Lucas: I’ve left pretty explicit instructions for there not to be any more features. There will definitely be no Episodes VII – IX. That’s because there isn’t any story. I mean, I never thought of anything! And now there are novels about the events after Episode IV, which isn’t at all what I would have done with it.

The Star Wars story is really the tragedy of Darth Vader. That is the story. Once Vader dies, he doesn’t come back to life, The Emperor doesn’t get cloned and Luke doesn’t get married…