{"id":748082,"date":"2026-06-19T21:25:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-19T21:25:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/748082\/"},"modified":"2026-06-19T21:25:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-19T21:25:12","slug":"lucas-wanted-an-emperor-palpatine-tv-series","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/748082\/","title":{"rendered":"Lucas Wanted An Emperor Palpatine TV Series"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>            <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/lucas-wanted-the-emperor-palpatine-tv-series.jpg\" data-caption=\"Lucasfilm\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1200\" height=\"800\" class=\"entry-thumb td-modal-image\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/lucas-wanted-the-emperor-palpatine-tv-series.jpg\"   alt=\"\" title=\"lucas-wanted-the-emperor-palpatine-tv-series\"\/><\/a>Lucasfilm<\/p>\n<p>British acting veteran Ian McDiarmid has spoken about plans for a scrapped \u201cStar Wars\u201d TV series based around his character of Emperor Palpatine.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking at Spacecon 2026 in San Antonio recently (via <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ign.com\/articles\/scrapped-star-wars-tv-series-would-have-shown-the-rise-of-emperor-palpatine-like-hitlers\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">IGN<\/a>), McDiarmid briefly discussed plans for the cancelled series, which he was told of directly by George Lucas himself.<\/p>\n<p>It seems Lucas pitched him the idea of starring in the project, one which never made it into production, which would\u2019ve chronicled his rise in a way not unlike the Robert Carlyle-led \u201cHitler: The Rise of Evil\u201d mini-series:<\/p>\n<p>\u201c[George Lucas] was talking about, I think I can tell you now, a television series.  We had lunch one day, and he said \u2018I\u2019ve got this idea, and I hope you might want to be involved.<\/p>\n<p>We could sort of follow the Emperor\u2019s progress, like Hitler\u2019s, some of that. There might be an assassination attempt, and of course it wouldn\u2019t succeed.\u2019 It sounded really exciting, and he also said that maybe you could direct one, and then I fainted. But sadly, that didn\u2019t come to pass.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>McDiarmid didn\u2019t mention the proposed series name but some have suggested it might have tied into Lucas\u2019 lavish and long-gestating \u201cStar Wars Underworld\u201d series.<\/p>\n<p>That would have bridged the gap between the prequel and original trilogies and would\u2019ve gone for at least 60 episodes.  That project was discarded after Lucas sold the franchise to Disney.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lucasfilm British acting veteran Ian McDiarmid has spoken about plans for a scrapped \u201cStar Wars\u201d TV series based&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":748083,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[112110,49,48,75,337],"class_list":["post-748082","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-bigslider","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/748082","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=748082"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/748082\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/748083"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=748082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=748082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=748082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}