Princess Leia
Star Wars will never be far from our cinema screens for the next few years, with Disney now having said that there will be a Star Wars film of some sort every year between 2015 and 2019.
This news has been met with a pretty bad reaction by the throngs of Star Wars fans out there and this writer agrees with them. This plan is just plain old overkill. A Star Wars film should be an event, a landmark moment. Releasing five in the space of as many years will just cheapen that massively.
While Disney obviously wants to make back the billions of dollars they’ve spent on buying Lucasfilm, the route their taking could simply poison the well. However, there is a route that would keep both the Star Wars name out there in the public domain and keep the fans happy. A big budget, live action TV show.
With a TV show, you could explore completely different areas of the Star Wars universe, focus on fan favourite characters that have never seen the screen before like Mara Jade or simply provide a fantastic bridge into whatever Episode VII will look like when it hits cinemas. It would allow them to be more creatively free, without the need for headline grabbing main characters that could prove massively restricting for the proposed spinoff films.
There were already plans for a Star Wars TV show that would have us go into the dark and seedy underbelly of the universe and follow some bounty hunters. That sounds far, far more appealing than a film exploring the youth of Han Solo. Although pretty much anything sounds more appealing than seeing someone do a bad Harrison Ford impression.
With TV drama now going through a simply phenomenal period of quality, the time is right to bring to the world a smaller, more personal tale in the Star Wars world that doesn’t chronically overuse the lightsaber like the last few films have done. It wouldn’t even be hard to tie it into the classic films that captured the hearts and minds of millions. The story of the individual who can’t win the war single handed isn’t something that’s ever really been touched on before. This could be the perfect opportunity to do just that.
It’s not as if Disney doesn’t own a ruddy great big TV network or anything. ABC would be the perfect place for a Star Wars show, giving it the mainstream audience that it would need in order to be cost effective for Disney. Star Wars is still a massive enough name to make enormous bow-wave on TV and will have every other network positively leaping out of the way.
So please Disney, call off the plans for an annual Star Wars box office assault, and move your gaze to the small screen.
What do you think? Would you want to see a Star Wars TV show, or are you pleased that we’re getting a whole bunch more films coming out? Let us know in the comments section.
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