The Lucas Empire Strikes Back

GEORGE LUCAS, the billionaire creator of the Star Wars films, has announced plans for two spin-off television series set in a far-off galaxy long after the final movie instalment of the space saga.

 

Lucas, who has earned an estimated $3 billion (£1.57 billion) from the Star Wars films, told a convention in the US that he planned to make an animated series and a live-action series upon completion of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, which is due for release on May 19.

 

The Star Wars films have generated box office sales of more than $3.4 billion since the first instalment in 1977.

 

“We’re moving into television, and a lot of ideas are popping up,” Lucas said at the convention in Indianapolis.

 

A half-hour animated series will expand on the two Clone Wars mini-series that Lucasfilm has produced for Time Warner’s Cartoon Network. The series would probably be produced at

Lucas’s new computer animation facility in Singapore.

 

That would be followed by the production of a live-action series set after Revenge of the Sith but before the original Star Wars, which was subtitled Episode IV: A New Hope. “We’re probably not going to start that for about a year,” Lucas said. “We want to write all the stories for the entire first season all at once.”

 

The live-action series would focus on peripheral characters that emerged in the Star Wars films, rather than central characters such as Luke Skywalker and Han Solo.

 

Neither series is close to production, and a spokesman for Lucasfilm said that nothing had been made official. “We plan to expand the Star Wars experience beyond the movies and are currently looking at different options for TV products,” a spokesman said.