George Lucas announced yesterday he'd "just begun work" on a live action TV spin-off set in the Star Wars universe, but warned fans not to expect a cathode ray tube outing for Luke Skywalker or Darth Vader.

According to the LA Times, Lucas revealed only that the series would be about the "the life of robots". He said: "The Skywalkers aren't in it, and it's about minor characters. It has nothing to do with Luke Skywalker or Darth Vader or any of those people. It's completely different. But it's a good idea, and it's going to be a lot of fun to do."

Lucas Animation is already hard at work on Star Wars: The Clone Wars - a computer-animated series which the director hopes will "introduce a new era of visuals to weekly episodic television".

Quite how the live action project works out remains to be seen. Producer Rick McCallum said yesterday that they haven't got past the stage of interviewing writers, and the world can only hope that Lucas's assertion that major Star Wars characters will not feature means the chosen pensmiths will not be tempted to resurrect Jar Jar Binks. ®

31 comments posted — Comment period finished