{"id":715098,"date":"2026-06-20T07:23:22","date_gmt":"2026-06-20T07:23:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/715098\/"},"modified":"2026-06-20T07:23:22","modified_gmt":"2026-06-20T07:23:22","slug":"george-lucas-original-star-wars-spin-off-plan-before-disney-sale-revealed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/715098\/","title":{"rendered":"George Lucas’ Original ‘Star Wars’ Spin-Off Plan Before Disney Sale Revealed"},"content":{"rendered":"

Emperor Sheev Palpatine, aka Darth Sidious, is the big bad of the Star Wars<\/a> franchise and the true embodiment of evil. While originally played by Marjorie Eaton under heavy make-up with Clive Revill providing the voice in The Empire Strikes Back, the character has been portrayed by Ian McDiarmid since Return of the Jedi. McDiarmid reprised his role in the Star Wars prequels before appearing over a decade later in The Rise of Skywalker, among the franchise’s most controversial decisions<\/a>. However, before Palpatine somehow returned in the sequels, it appears that George Lucas was eyeing a series about how the Sith Emperor came to power.<\/p>\n

During an appearance at Spacecon 2026 (via Popverse<\/a>), Ian McDiarmid revealed that before selling Star Wars to Disney, Lucas was considering developing a Palpatine prequel series. Although it was just a discussion, and it is unclear whether plans ever went further, Lucas seemingly intended to detail Palpatine’s rise to power and possibly explore his relationship with his master, the mysterious Darth Plagueis. McDiarmid said:<\/p>\n

\u201c[George Lucas] was talking about, I think I can tell you now, a television series. At the time we didn\u2019t think about Star Wars in terms of television series. Very speculative. We had lunch one day, and he said I\u2019ve got this idea, and I hope you might want to be involved. We could sort of follow the Emperor\u2019s progress, like Hitler’s, some of that. There might be an assassination attempt, and of course it wouldn\u2019t succeed. 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

\"Palpatine
\n Palpatine in Star Wars The Rise of SkywalkerWalt Disney Pictures<\/p>\n

This is one of many Star Wars projects George Lucas floated between the release of Revenge of the Sith in 2005 and the sale of Lucasfilm to Disney in 2012. One was the highly publicized but never realized live-action series, Star Wars: Underworld, which was scrapped due to budget concerns. In 2012, before selling Star Wars to Disney, Lucas commissioned Lawrence Kasdan to write a script for a Han Solo prequel, which would eventually become Solo: A Star Wars Story. Then there were Lucas’ original plans for a sequel trilogy<\/a>, which Disney scrapped in favor of a new direction.<\/p>\n

As for Palpatine, the character was controversially brought back in The Rise of Skywalker and revealed to be the grandfather of the sequel trilogy’s lead character, Rey. Subsequent Star Wars media, such as The Bad Batch and The Mandalorian, have since tried to explain Palpatine’s resurrection. Even though Lucasfilm is looking to shift away from Star Wars television series, an origin series for Palpatine might not be a bad call.<\/p>\n

If made now, a Palpatine prequel series could pick up on the scrapped plotlines teased at the end of The Acolyte, which included the first on-screen appearance of Darth Plagueis<\/a>. Since the audience knows the lead character will grow up to be the most evil man in the galaxy, a potential spin-off can explore the darker, more complex themes that made Andor so successful.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Emperor Sheev Palpatine, aka Darth Sidious, is the big bad of the Star Wars franchise and the true…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":715099,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[88,206],"class_list":["post-715098","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715098","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=715098"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715098\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/715099"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=715098"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=715098"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=715098"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}