Czech Position got a chance to talk to producer Rick McCallum about the “Star Wars” TV series, which he says may shoot in Prague.
McCallum was asked whether the Czech capital was in the running for the series. “Oh, absolutely. This would be one of the primary places because of the talent,” he said. McCallum produced Lucasfilm’s upcoming Red Tails, which was also shot in the Czech Republic.
“The TV series is on hold, but that has nothing to do with the Czech Republic; it has to do with [the episodes being] so ambitious,” he added. “We have 50 hours of third-draft scripts, but the problem we have is there is a lot of digital animation; we don’t have the technology yet to be able to do them at a price that is safe for television. Since we would be financing them, it would be suicide for us to do this [now]. So we are going to wait three or four years.”
Still, the “Star Wars” TV series may never see the light of day, McCallum mentioned. “Network television and cable television as we know it are completely imploding, so we’re not really sure that in five years’ time we can release a dramatic one-hour episode because it is all reality TV now.”
The producer also revealed the basic storyline of the scripts. “It takes place between episodes three and four, when Luke Skywalker was growing up as a teenager, but it has nothing to do with Luke… Basically, it is like ‘The Godfather’; it’s the Empire slowly building up its power base around the galaxy, what happens in Coruscant, which is the major capital, and it’s [about] a group of underground bosses who live there and control drugs, prostitution.”
McCallum also said that the 3D conversion of Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace, hitting theaters on February 10, 2012, will serve as a test. If it works, they’ll be released one a year, if it doesn’t, “Episode I” will be the only one.
