‘Star Wars: Underworld’ Details Revealed – The $2.4 Billion Show That Never Happened

Star Wars: Underworld was a planned live-action TV series set between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope. George Lucas announced it in 2005, and over 60 scripts were written. The show was supposed to be dark, action-packed, and focused on the criminal underworld of Coruscant. It would not follow the main Star Wars characters but could feature some familiar faces.

Lucas and his team worked hard to bring the series to life, but in 2010, it was put on hold because it was too expensive to make. The show was described as Deadwood in space and The Godfather of Star Wars. It would have explored bounty hunters, crime lords, and the rise of the Empire.

Although it was never made, Star Wars: Underworld remains one of the most exciting “what-ifs” in Star Wars history.

Rick McCallum, who worked with George Lucas, shared new details about Star Wars: Underworld. He tried to figure out how much the show would cost. The cheapest he could make it was $40 million per episode.

With 60 planned episodes, the total cost would have been $2.4 billion. That was too expensive, so the show was never made. Even though it didn’t happen, the idea still sounds amazing. McCallum shared this information in an interview on the Young Indy Chronicles podcast.

“I think we had over 60 scripts. Third-draft scripts,” McCallum said “Again, the most wonderful writers in the world on it. And again, we created exactly the same experience for everybody at [Skywalker] Ranch, and again just a phenomenal group of talent.”

McCallum states that the show was going to be very different from other Star Wars stories. It was going to be darker, more mature, and more complex. The show would have challenged what people expected from Star Wars in exciting ways.

“And these were dark. They were sexy, they were violent, they were just absolutely wonderful. Wonderful, complicated, challenging. I mean, it would have blown up the whole Star Wars universe and Disney definitely would have never offered George to buy it.” He said “But it’s one of the great disappointments of our life. But the problem was each episode was bigger than the films, so the lowest I could get it down to with the technology that existed then was about 40 million an episode.”

So far the record for the most expensive Star Wars show is held by Andor. Recently, Disney has revealed that producing the Star Wars series has cost $645 million so far, including a record $290.9 million spent on its second season, which premieres in April 2025.

This makes it the most expensive Star Wars production in a single year, surpassing the $280.7 million spent on ‘The Last Jedi’ in 2019 and the $243.8 million for ‘The Force Awakens’ in 2016.

The $290.9 million spent on ‘Andor’s’ second season so far doesn’t cover the full production cost.

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