The Star Wars films are the movies that completely shaped the passion that I have for every form of entertainment media today.  He probably doesn’t remember it, but Michael, from sister sites AppleGazette and ForeverGeek, introduced the far, far away saga to me back in 8th grade, and it radically transformed me.  I could go much deeper into that, but let’s save that for when the TV series gets closer, shall we?

I saw over at ForeverGeek that uber-producer Rick McCallum gave an interview to Star Wars fansite Toche Station, with a few updates about the pre-production of the sci-fi saga’s first entrance into the small-screen, live action genre (ignoring the Holiday Special, of course).

Could you tell us something about the status of the Star Wars television series? Something about the actors maybe?
I can’t tell you anything about actors because we’re not there yet. This is a long process to get it right. First of all: where are we going to shoot? Then: who’s going to write? And finally: who’s going to direct? George has been working for the last seven, eight months on the story arc line of where the series goes. The dream is to do way over one hundred hours of it. If we can get it right, we have some fantastic characters that nobody has ever met before and start a whole other world of Star Wars that comes out every week instead of every three years.
Will any of the older characters appear in the series?
It’s a whole different group of characters.
When do you expect the first episode will be televised?
That’s tough. The TV world is changing a lot. Hopefully we will have finished the first episode by the end of 2008, so that in 2009 it can come out.

2009?!?  *sigh*  It’s a long road ahead.  Next year, though, we can expect a Clone Wars-based, all CG animation cartoon to hit.  I would expect an official announcement on this on or around May 25, as that’s the 30 year anniversary of the original film’s release. 

You can expect us to follow both of these releases closely.