Should Shadows of the Empire be made into a film?

Having read the

'EXPANDED SCREENPLAY: 'STAR WARS: EPISODE V 1/2: SHADOWS OF THE EMPIRE'

by George Lucas, Steve Perry and John Wagner

Featuring extra material from

Christopher McElroy

Script Adaptation by Christopher McElroy ( This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ) The following is a 'what if?' screenplay, incorporating material published by Bantam Books, Dark Horse Comics, and Scholastic Books. '

I was wondering why don't they turn it into a film? It does make Boba look good and features some of the Emperor's political friends and it also adds the gaps between ESB and ROTJ, like how they knew where Han Solo is and there plan being formulated. Also the Rogue Squadron feature in it. It would make a great film.

Don't you know? The expanded universe doesn't mean shit in George Lucas's eyes. Oh... and the fact that George strongly suggests... nay... confirms that Episode 3 will be the last Star Wars film ever made... at least until the copyright runs out - by that time I'm sure SW will be ancient history.

'Liam O'Sullivan'

The copyright effectively doesn't run out. Now that 'Star Wars' is owned by Lucasfilm Limited and not GL personally, it applies until the company ceases trading.

There are ongoing discussion between Fox and Lucasfilm for further items post-2010. Ideas so far declined have been a mini-series (of 12 episodes) and a feature length for the gap between epIV and epV.

Well I suppose theres's the problem. Although I would take Lucas's side of dissmissing EU, (even though I'm sure he has some roles when it comes to making the videogames) but it was his idea, and not many people like having there ideas expanded or changed. Still I guess there's no chance of it becoming an unnofficial SW film.

If they could animate SOTE that would be cool. I remember reading somewhere that Lucas enjoyed Shadows and how he'd wished he made a movie of that also. The comic rocked not to mention the game. I just wished the controls weren't so flimsy when moving from side to side.

Who would play Xizor? It would have to be someone physically imposing. John Malkovich is 6'4', and under makeup he could probably pull it off. But they'd probably end up going with some idiot like The Rock.

Of course you'd have to recast all the major characters to do it.

'Shadows of the Empire' will actually make a great movie. However, there is only one small problem: Mark and Carrie can no longer play the young Luke and Leia now that they are 20 years older, and replacing them with different actors would be unacceptable if the integrity of the original trilogy is to be preserved. The only option that really makes sense as far new SW movies are concerned is to have a sequel trilogy taking place some 30 years after episode VI and featuring new leading characters along with an older Luke, Leia and Han who could be played by the original cast. The easiest solution would be to simply adapt already existing EU novels to the big screen, but, alternatively, a completely different storyline (totally unrelated to the EU) could be devised.

It has been said that Lucas like Shadows so much that had it been written by the time that he was filming ROTJ that he would have incorporated the story into the film version.

That was hard to figure out - I'm glad we had a novel for it

It may have 'been said,' but I highly doubt it is true. I'd like to see some proof of this. Lucas has commented on more than one occasion that the expanded universe stuff is just that, stuff, nothing else. Zahn and Anderson, too, have commented on the fact that the novels and such are not a true part of the Star Wars universe. Lucas, during a special around 1998 (maybe 1997), actually laughed at the fact that people believe Boba lived after Jedi (he died, of course, and Lucas re-enforced that by showing him getting chomped in the Special Edition).