There's a pretty good chance you've never
seen the low res standard def video that's on your screen
right now before 2020.
Unless your name is George Lucas or one of the very few people
that helped create it.
What you are watching right now has been kept under wraps,
unreleased, well, with the exception of a now private
Vimeo video, that almost no one discovered for maybe as
long as the past eight years.
It's raw footage, test footage created a show a studio
or a network what the final product will
look like should they decide to pick it up and bring it
to series.
This footage on your screen is the only known footage
from a TV show that was reportedly in development
for almost seven years.
This is Star Wars Underworld.
And it is maybe the coolest, weirdest television show
that the world never got a chance to see.
So weird, in fact, that it potentially involved
the Emperor's love life, and so cool
that a lot of what you've seen in Disney's Solo movie
may have been ideas sprung from this very show.
But I guess the real question is, what really is this.
And is it possible that if this had worked,
that Disney might not own Star Wars today at all.
This console has been compromised.
Lock down the area and search the vehicle.
In 2005, George Lucas put together a team of writers.
Writers that had worked on things
like Battlestar Galactica.
Writers that had played a role in previous Star Wars
products, and, well, himself--
and brought them to Skywalker Ranch.
But when you've made some of the most popular movies
of all time, you can set up shop anywhere you please.
Exactly what George Lucas has done here
at the magnificent Skywalker Ranch in northern California.
Over the next few years, an idea would slowly
begin to coalesce into something more tangible.
A Star Wars TV series.
Now this wasn't like The Clone Wars or a piece
of the more non-traditional extended universe.
George treated this like the movies.
He wanted what became known as Star Wars Underworld
to be some of the most important pieces of Star Wars canon.
To fill in some of the most important holes in that canon.
And he wanted to make sure that even
though it was going to be on television
that no concessions were made.
So over the next few years, 50 episodes were written.
That's right.
50 episodes.
Two full 25 episode seasons were hammered out
in script form, all before any network could even
get a pilot on the air.
And this footage you're seeing now would be created
and word would start to spread, so much
so that even God of War game creator Cory Barlog
would fly out to read some of the scripts
to potentially partner on a tie-in video game.
But it's what Underworld that makes
it so sad it never happened.
Plans have been acquired.
We will need weapons and your best soldiers.
Lucas had big story ideas for Underworld.
In fact, what if I told you he was
essentially ready to create this movie long before Disney did?
Lucas had a lot of ideas, but he really
wanted the show to explore the time period between episodes
three and four.
But as you can see, he wanted to take a much more on the ground
Blade Runner approach.
But on Coruscant.
As Den of Geek reported, he wanted
to tell a story of a galaxy of crime.
The underworld.
Of young Han Solo.
He wanted to put to screen the story of how
Han and Chewbacca met, the story of how Lando lost the Falcon.
But what's far more interesting to me
is that Underworld attempted to tell the story of the Emperor.
Barlog told VentureBeat that the scripts he saw
included a serious back story for the Emperor.
One that explained how he ended up on the dark side
and where his life went south.
He told them that the scripts he read actually
made the emperor a sympathetic character that you
could feasibly care about.
Weirdly enough, it was love, apparently,
that was going to change the Emperor.
A heartless woman would ruin his life and his perception
of the world around him.
Which obviously is a strange subplot to hear now.
But according to Cory, it was well done.
In fact, the Emperor and Han weren't
the only important figures set to appear on the show.
Even Vader was apparently written into the scripts.
But it all fell apart rather unceremoniously.
No!
So what happened?
And what exactly does all this have
to do with Disney and their current ownership of Star Wars?
Well, look at this footage, and let's
take a look at the landscape of television viewership
over the past two decades.
By the time George was ready to get Underworld into production,
media had begun to shift, and so had
the narrative surrounding it.
Streaming was beginning its relatively quick rise
and television viewership was beginning its equally quick
decline.
But worse yet, the Game of Thrones
of the world, the Stranger Things, weren't options.
Paid cable hadn't yet proven an audience large enough
to support this multi-million dollar production,
and Netflix wouldn't introduce its first original show
until 2013.
So Lucas had a decision to make.
He could either pitch this massively expensive idea
to television networks, but then he'd
only get 44 minutes an episode and a metric ton of commercials
interspersed in between, or he could
take it to a premium service in HBO
and risk a smaller audience.
Instead, it just kind of sat there.
Too expensive for the landscape of television
at the time, too early for the advent of original streaming
products.
It is strangely unique in that had it
been envisioned just a few years later,
it probably would be on our television
screens and our phones today.
But it's also unique in what its failure meant for Star Wars.
And that's where Disney comes in.
It's over Anakin!
I have the high ground.
In 2012, the Underworld project was officially buried.
The moment that Disney finalized their acquisition of the IP.
But what I think is kind of crazy
is just how the show could have changed that.
Lucas was heavily involved in the production and writing
of Underworld.
And given this test footage, it's
clear that they may have had the world's first Star Wars
Game of Thrones on their hands.
Remember, this would have been the first bit of live action
Star Wars since the prequels had released in theaters.
It would have been Earth shattering.
And had it found a home on TV or even streaming, A,
the cost of the acquisition by Disney
likely would have gone up astronomically, and B,
I don't know that George would have been incentivized
to sell Star Wars at all.
The show likely would have run for many years,
especially given that two seasons were written before it
was even picked up, and had the show been
of any kind of quality at all, it
would have certainly maintained the numbers to stay on the air,
because, well, its Star Wars.
And had it came to fruition, suddenly Star Wars
is back front and center in the zeitgeist
of popular culture in a new, meaningful, and substantive
way.
Maybe if Underworld happens, the new trilogy never coalesces,
maybe the show spurns a new Lucas trilogy,
maybe we'd never get this.
Star Wars Underworld is one of the most
incredible, interesting canceled unknowns
in the history of modern media.
Its existence was mere rumor for so long
that a lot of the reporting done on the show, and even
the old Vimeo video, seemed like rumor or fantasy.
And yet its potential, this Blade Runner esque mobster Star
Wars tale really feels every bit like the very thing
that would set the world on fire in today's television
and streaming space.
With all the mistakes, missteps, and questionable decisions
made by Lucas and Lucas Entertainment
after the original trilogy, this feels so distinctly
like a sure thing.
A small green flower sticking out
of the desert Tatooine sand.
But let's be real.
If this happened, we may never gotten this.
Again, and I mean, come on.
This-- this was worth it.
I have a tiny little addendum I want to add
to the end of this video.
But first, if you enjoyed this video,
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Now really quickly, I do want to say something
about Star Wars Underworld.
First off, there is a great in depth write up by Den of Geek
about the show if you want to check that out.
But what I would like to add is that what Disney's done
with The Mandalorian has been incredibly impressive,
but I will say that if there's any light at the end
of the tunnel for something like Star Wars Underworld
to exist today, I think the Mandalorian is maybe
doing a great job of showing that Underworld could
and should exist, and that this universe is ripe with stories
to tell that you might not be able to in just two hours.
Again, not sad necessarily that it doesn't exist,
but it definitely could, and maybe should be something
that Disney thinks about revisiting,
even if they don't necessarily have the rights to that idea.
I obviously don't know all the details of that particular end
of the buyout, but anyways, on your screen right
now are two more episodes of Nerdstalgic.
If you enjoyed this video, you can click on either of those
to see more of what I've done recently.
And hopefully I will see you guys in the next video.