Fett has been confirmed for SW-TV

Like most projects developed under the Star Wars name, hard facts about the plotline for the upcoming Star Wars live-action TV series have been hard to come by. However, in a new interview with the Star Wars Insider magazine, producer Rick McCallum reveals one big detail: Boba Fett will be a part of the series.

It had already been revealed that the show will take place within the 20 year gap in-between Revenge of the Sith and the original Star Wars (A New Hope), but as to what characters would be featured in it, all George Lucas had said was that it would not star any of the main characters from the films. However, as it had been revealed that it could feature peripheral characters from the film series, many fans had speculated that the ever-popular Boba Fett would be a prime candidate. Then last year, the first (and to this point only) promotional image from the series, shown at Toy Fair, displayed Fett's iconic helmet, which of course only fueled rumors he would be on the show.

McCallum clears up the rumors, telling Star Wars insider "The series will be about brand new characters, a group of people we haven't seen yet, except Boba Fett, who will be an instrumental part of it. The series will also showcase other bounty hunters."


McCallum says the series is about "what happens to an empire. It's a much darker, much more character-based thing. It's not as plot-driven [as the movies]." McCallum notes that the challenge they're facing at Lucasfilm is making the show "look like a feature on a television budget, with all new characters, new environments, new planets, and trying to keep the storyline alive for a lot of people."

Also revealed in the interview is that four artists have been working on designs for the show, including Erik Tiemens, who worked on Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith. McCallum also says "We have two great writers from England, one from Australia, and three from the United States," but doesn't name who they are. A planned writers' meeting in November had to be scrapped due to the writers' strike but McCallum says that when it does occur it will be "in order to develop the 'bible' for the characters, in other words who they are and where they're going to go, along with some of the story ideas. We're going to try and hash out the first three or four episodes."

McCallum says they hope to have the first scripts by February, but with no idea when the writers' strike will end, that seems highly questionable. However, it's worth noting that Lucasfilm is said to be considering making an independent deal with the Writers Guild of America in the same manner that David Letterman's Worldwide Pants, United Artists and The Weinstein Company have all done. If that occurs, it would almost certainly allow scripts to progress on Star Wars, even if the strike continues. McCallum tells Star Wars Insider they hope to be shooting by the end of 2008 or early in 2009. The live-action series is expected to premiere by the end of 2009, following this fall's debut of the new animated Clone Wars series.

The Boba Fett confirmation will now of course lead to the next round of speculation: Who will play him? An actor new to the role or someone we've seen before? Considering the series spans 20 years -- and no one knows if stories will be told chronologically, or leap back and forward in time-- it's certainly possible for either Daniel Logan (Attack of the Clones' young Boba) or Temuera Morrison (Jango Fett) to play the character, or in fact for both of them to, if the show follows the character through two different periods in his life, a la George Lucas' Young Indiana Jones Chronicles.