September 20 2007

source: TVGuide.com




CLONE WARS CGI SERIES ONLY EXCERPTS FROM INTERVIEW


TV Guide: Can we talk about the two Star Wars television series you're working on?

Lucas: There's Clone Wars and we're in the middle of that.

Lucas: Well it's basically like Star Wars, takes place between obviously Episode II and Episode III but it's the same kind of action. Unfortunately it doesn't fall into the realm of what animation is, which is either adult, kind of off-color humor, or kiddie stuff. This is like Star Wars — sort of in between those two things.

It's a lot of battle stuff and it's obviously the Clone Wars so it's a war picture. So it's kind of a PG-13 animated TV series which is something that has never been done before and obviously doesn't fit in any of the conventional slots that these things fall into. In that it's very different and I think it's very exciting. It's got a very, very sophisticated look to it.

It's very much like the features. We're still trying to figure out how to put it on the air.

Lucas: We're going to do a hundred episodes. I think we're on [No.] 40 right now. We'll probably end up with 50 to 60 episodes before we start to put it on the air. We'd like to put it on next fall in about a year from now but we'll see what happens.


TV Guide: Where do you see it living? How do you see this playing? Obviously it doesn't sound like a Saturday morning cartoon.

Lucas: Right now we don't know. It's out there to people and people are talking about it, but so far everybody's got the same conundrums — "How do we program it? Where does it live? Where can we put something like this?" You know it has to go after 9 o'clock and it can't be on a kiddie channel.


TV Guide: So you see it on a more mainstream channel or the Sci Fi Channel or something like that?

Lucas: Well, it's one of those things. Television is sort of bifurcated up into small niches and unless you fit in one of those niches, no one knows what to do with you. Of course, I'm always outside the box, so it's like "Uh-oh, we don't have a box for you." [Laughs] It's Star Wars and it's really good. So I'm sure somehow or another people will also start thinking outside the box and it will find its home.


TV Guide: And where will that live in the Star Wars continuum relative to Clone Wars and relative to the films?

Lucas: Well, Clone Wars has got all the characters in it — Yoda and Anakin and Obi Wan and the Emperor and all that — so it's basically the movie.

They’ve already made 40 episodes!!! Yabba, dabba, doooooooo! We need a contact at Lucas Films to record one on his/her dodgy mobile phone. There's thinking outside the box for ya, a Sony Ericsson box that is.

I’m actually looking forward to this again. All the networks will want this; especially if the production is of the quality he refers to.

Apparently we now understand why they're doing it in Singapore. If you get Cained for chewing gum in public....what happens if you leak some of Uncle George's Clone Wars material? *snicker*

This thing has some potential.

As for the live action series, I am dubious. The Force is sensing crap.

I like the sound of this thing so far.

"it's a war picture"

Awesome.

And that they allready have 40 episodes done is great news too.

The one thing that I don't like about the interviews so far is that it's sounding like George is willing to split this story up. So he'll seel 26 to Network X, and if network X doesn't dig it after that, he'll sell the next 26 episodes to Network Y. That could get annoying.

It seems a given that an appartus will be in place for LFL to distribute them online to double dip on each episode and/or selling DVD compilations of, say, each three or four episodes as they air. If you don't want to chase the show on different networks, there's always that option.

There's always Bit Torrent too, but I'd never advocate a thing like that.

Absolutely. Piracy is bad. I saw an add by the MPAA, they told me so.

I think iTunes might work well for that.

I already know I'll be downloading it, just like the first Clone Wars series. It'll likely never be on when I'm front of a TV, so I don't care either way what station ends up carrying it.

Hyperspace should have the episodes for download. They need some reason to justify that thing.

Wouldn't justification imply that they cared? Given the crap that they've supplied us for content over the last three months, I question whether they care that much any more.

Agree. Hyperspace will probably offer a collection of seriously dull behind the scenes docs. You’ll get to see a grafx artist or two wondering around a car park, occasionally knocking a football about or perhaps one of the sound technicians…taking a dump in a bin. Quality stuff!

Those Hyperspace bastards finally decided to block my account recently. My subscription ended 2 years ago. But yeah, the material was mostly bogus.

Hyperspace is being dramatically scaled back with it's old content - including blogs - to be made public and free, hence the ads and banners all over starwars.com. It was stated as much by starwars.com when the HyperSpace FanClub price cut to $14.95 was announced.

Clone Wars 3D and the Live Action Series will most likely be available for pay-per-download via iTunes as the previous Clone Wars Micro-Series were migrated over there. Lucas and McCallum have been suggesting in their recent interviews that if network deals don't happen, LucasFilm will stream the episodes and go straight to dvd. McCallum is floating the idea of offering Star Wars High Definition Movies via pay-per-download also.

MF will be offering both television series for download for free of course as we have in the past when MF world premiered the Original Trilogy DVDs in 2004, and of course all aspects of Revenge Of The Sith.

I'm still waiting for the webstrips to go public so I can share the wealth. *cackle*

One of the weird things over there is that you can't save the making of docs from the PT or the Beneath the Dome videos even with QuickTime Pro. After all this time, does it really hurt Lucas if one wants to save those to their hard drive?

And why they never put up higher quality docs for Episode I while they were getting the ones from Episode II up sort of surprised me.

I think they're going to be end up burying Star Wars into its grave just like Paramount did with Star Trek...

Paramount is definitely hoping Abrams can resurrect Star Trek. He claims to be a fan who knows the material. But he said that about Superman...and his script for that was crap.

I have more hope for this show, the animated series because I'm more for the characters we know. Others don't agree though. They want to go in new directions. That's understandable and I can see their point.

I guess it's like Star Trek after Kirk. Star Wars without the Skywalkers.

Star Trek is dead, and should stay dead, at least for the future. Give it time to rest.

If anyone's interested...
There a way to get around that "unable to save" crap.

If you "View Source" on the pop-up that springs with the quicktime viewer, capture the url that ends with the .mov extension.

Copy it out, open up text file or word and create a hyperlink. In word it's right click, insert hyperlink. Put something in for the text to show.

Save the file as an html page.

Now open up that page, right click and choose "save target as". You should have your quicktime movie.

Shatner's not dead yet though is he? Unless the cancelling of Show Me The Money brought him a swift visit to an intergalactic styled coffin that no doubt will be fired into space for some depressed aliens to find and cheer themselves up by sticking his wire brush toupee to one of their space helmets. Have any of you guys watched this game show? We don't get it here in the UK (can't even find any torrents either) but I've read about it. Sounds like a shocker with plenty of unintentional comedy!

How the mighty have fallen. Serves him right for thinking it would be clever to do the intro at the Lucas Lifetime Achievement Award.

Well I have kept on saying that old HyperSpace was going to free however it's getting late in the year and so far no movement. Hell HyperSpace doesn't even have the last two Insider Supplements up yets.

The recent weekly Clone Wars 2008 updates have been somewhat lackluster but at least we are getting updated. I'm sure as we near the holiday season we will get more good stuff.

The web docs and pretty much all other movies have been converted from .mov to the new youtube-like flash player. One may want to try web.archive.org starwars.com for working links.

If I thought it would do any good to complain I'd send a nastigram to starwars.com you know, I'd pay 14.95 for last year's hyperspace. This year's hyperspace isn't worth the 25 cents in electricity I used to type up this post.