'Star Wars' to become a TV show
The Star Wars story will continue as a television series, George Lucas confirmed on the weekend.
The comments come one month ahead of the release of Revenge of the Sith, which Lucas has declared will be the last instalment in the popular movie saga.
Lucas announced plans â already rumoured on the internet â for two shows, one of which will be an animated series, the other live-action.
The live-action show will be set in the time between Sith and the original Star Wars film.
The director was speaking at Celebration III, an officially sanctioned Star Wars convention.
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Lucas said the show will probably start production next year. He intends to make it in a fashion similar to the Raiders of the Lost Ark-inspired Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, writing and shooting the entire first season in one go.
"I'm going to get it started, and hire the show runners and all of that, then I'll probably step away," he said at a town-hall style question-and-answer session.
He said the series would feature existing characters, although not necessarily the main characters.
"There's a lot of issues that are connected, but you won't necessarily see a lot of the people that are connected," he said.
The animated show will be an expansion of the Clone Wars animated mini-adventures that ran on Cartoon Network, and will take place in the time between Attack of the Clones and Sith.
There are currently 25 instalments of that story, each three minutes long. The new series will feature 30-minute episodes using 3-D animation.
Lucas also said that the rumours floating around in the 1970s and early 1980s that the Star Wars films would be a series of nine motion pictures were false.
"To be very honest with you, I never ever thought of anything that happened beyond episode six," he said.
"It's the Darth Vader story. It starts with him being a young boy and it ends with him dying. I never ever really considered ever taking that particular story further."
Revenge of the Sith is, in the Star Wars timeline, the third episode in the series. It ends with the birth of twins Princess Leia and Luke Skywalker.
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The original Star Wars, released in 1977, takes place 19 years later.
Lucas did not say which network or cable channel might air the new shows.
He also did not categorically rule out making an additional Star Wars film, but said any such film would use different characters and situations from the Star Wars universe.