ABC Considering Live-Action STAR WARS TV Series

At today's TCA winter press tour stop, ABC President Paul Lee spoke to Entertainment Weekly, confirming that the network was eyeing a potential live-action STAR WARS TV series, following the the successful acquirement of Lucasfilms.

"We'd love to do something with Lucasfilm, we're not sure what yet," Lee told the site. "We haven't even sat down with them. We're going to look at [the live-action series], we're going to look at all of them, and see what's right. We weren't able to discuss this with them until [the acquisition] closed and it just closed. It's definitely going to be part of the conversation."

A live-action STAR WARS series has, in fact, been on the shelf for many years. Lucasfilm producer Rick McCallum first pitched the series, enlisting Ron Moore (BATTLESTAR GALACTICA) to write many of the some 50 scripts that were eventually finished.

The sheer size of the show - given the effects necessary to bring to STAR WARS to the small screen - was too much for any network. The project hasn't been touched or mentioned until now.

Though Lee and the network are excited at the prospect after Disney scooped up Lucasfilm, he's not so sure the series would actually pan out.

"It's going to be very much up to the Lucasfilm brands how they want to play it," he continued. "We got to a point here with Marvel, a very special point, where we're in the Marvel universe, and very relevantly so, but we're not doingThe Avengers. But S.H.I.E.L.D. is part of The Avengers. So maybe something oblique is the way to [approach the Star Wars series] rather than going straight head-on at it."

According to EW, the series would follow "rival families struggling over the control of the seedy underside of the Star Wars universe and the people who live within the subterranean level and air shafts of the metropolis planet Coruscant (the Empire's urban-sprawl-covered home planet)."

In the meantime, Disney has commissioned STAR WARS EPISODE VII, written by Michael Arndt (LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE, THE HUNGER GAMES: CATCHING FIRE), for a 2015 release. And if Disney has it their way, many more are set to come.

Click here to read Entertainment Weekly's full report.

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