Wednesday, October 25, 2017

Here's why Shadows of the Empire "happened"



There's a long retrospective here:
According to Lucasfilm Licensing president Howard Roffman, Shadows of the Empire actually rose out of an opportunity which presented itself after Lucas adjusted his Episode I writing schedule. "At the time, the idea was that he was going to release Episode I in 1997 for the 20th anniversary of Star Wars," says Roffman. "Around the same time, he got this idea to bring the original Star Wars back to the theaters, and we would do that in 1996 as kind of a prelude to Episode I. Well, lo and behold, as George gets down the road in 1995, the script isn't progressing as quickly as he thought, so we faced the bitter reality that there's no way we're going to get the film done for 1997.