As the live action TV era of Star Wars gets into high gear with The Mandalorian, Kenobi and Cassian Andor, it’s understandable that we would look back over a decade to the last time a live action series was ready to go in the form of Star Wars Underworld. Stories have bubbled for years about just how close that series was to coming to fruition, and this test footage appears to reinforce just how far down the line the series was.
All rights belong to Stargate Studios and Lucasfilm. Released test footage from 2010 of the cancelled Star Wars TV show “Underworld,” which was to take place in the lower levels of Coruscant. The series was set after the events of Order 66. The video game “1313” was to be a tie-in of this series. Due to the immense cost of shooting the series, as well as the selling of Lucasfilm to Disney, “Underworld” was delayed and eventually cancelled. This footage was produced by Stargate Studios (whose VFX resume includes Doctor Who, The Walking Dead, The Orville) in partnership with Lucasfilm. The VFX technology displayed in the making-of portion is Stargate Studios’ impressive real-time rendering Virtual Backlot Live technology.
And this is how Screenrant describe what’s on show.
Set in the seedy underbelly of Coruscant, the sequence depicts a Rebel spy using a device to steal Imperial plans that seem to be related to a Star Destroyer. Stormtroopers and surveillance droids patrol the streets, illustrating the might and power of the Empire at this stage in the Star Wars timeline. Lucas’ penchant for pushing the technological envelope is on fully display here, as the Underworld footage is a nice blend of practical and digital techniques. Actors are wearing actual stormtrooper costumes (as opposed to the fully digital clone troopers of the prequels), but they’re primarily filming on a green screen and the Coruscant environments are added in post. One can see why Underworld might have been too expensive of a proposition when it was initially being considered. It likely would have had a greater chance of being made today, especially in an age where streaming services are prevalent. There are similarities between Underworld and how The Mandalorian is made.
In the arena of Star Wars, Underworld is very much a ‘lost mission’, like Star Trek: Phase Two was to Star Trek. Whether Lucasfilm acknowledge this over the next few days – or debunk it – or not will be fascinating to see.
