Lucas gets more specific

George Lucas came to the Museum of Television and Radio’s William S. Paley Festival Saturday night. The first 90 minutes of the two-hour event were devoted to “The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles” and Lucas’ efforts to bring that series to DVD with accompanying documentaries and study guides.

There was interest in the project, but the crowd was clearly hungering also for details on the upcoming “Star Wars” TV projects.

They didn’t get a lot. Lucas spoke briefly of the upcoming animated “3D” “Clone Wars” series, describing the Cartoon Network’s earlier series of “Clone Wars” shorts as “a test.”
He told the Paley audience that the upcoming animated series would “create the ambiance of the movies in cartoon form,” noting that there is currently “nothing on TV quite like it.”
He said his objective with the series was to “create a pretty good adventure, breaking all the rules.”

He described the upcoming animated series as “episodic.” “We don’t have to deal with the Skywalker story,” he said. “There could be some episodes that have nothing but Clone Warriors in them.”

He said he would produce 100 episodes of the animated “Clone Wars” series, “then make a deal to show them.”

When asked to discuss the characters his upcoming live-action “Star Wars” series would focus upon, Lucas said that project was still “years away.”

He also suggested that a “second animated series” might be produced before he got around to the live-action series.

“It’s one show that splits up into four shows,” he said, “and each show will deal with a different character.”

There was no follow-up, so immediately after the event I consulted with some of my fellow "AICN Jedi Council" members in attendance regarding that last statement. Everyone agreed that when Lucas spoke of the “one show that splits up into four shows,” he seemed to be referring to the the live-action “Star Wars” TV series.

So does Lucas intend for the live-action “Star Wars” series to follow an “American Graffiti” structure, following four sets of characters in each episode? Or does he intend to revisit each set of characters every fourth episode? Or does he intend something else entirely?
So cryptic. But interesting.

“For me, the future is TV,” Lucas told the Paley crowd. With features, he said, “the odds are so great, the risk is so high. I just want to have a good time.”