Exclusive: Shadows Of The Empire Live-Action Project In Development
The latest Giant Freakin Robot exclusive has it that a Star Wars Shadows of the Empire adaptation is currently in the works.
This article is more than 2 years old
What a time to be alive for Star Wars fans. Nearly 45 years after New Hope graced the big screen, we are finally getting a chance for all of the smaller stories to get real arcs around them. No longer are characters and plot details having to recede into the background of movie history or lore. Instead, with major dollars funneling into the franchise, we are able to have a view of the entire landscape and timeline. This kind of thing would have felt impossible even just a few years ago. And now we have another exciting update with a Giant Freaking Robot scoop from our trusted and proven source. It looks like there is now a Shadows of the Empire live-action movie in development. This is just another example of an unseen part of the Stars Wars timeline getting full run.
While there are scant details around who is exactly working on the Shadows of the Empire project, we can begin speculating on just how they plan to pull something like this off when it’s all said and done. Unlike other current projects which are exploring different characters that had roles in either animated form, or in other Star Wars novels, this story has to do with characters in the original trilogy which came out back in 1977. Since this is the case, we could get a recasting of the original group of characters for the first time in the original’s timeline.
Star Wars: Shadow of the Empire came out back in 1994 and was meant to bridge the story gap between Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back and Episode VI: Return of the Jedi. The story came out in novel form, but there were also comic books that accompanied it as part of the release, and eventually, it was adapted into a video game for Nintendo64. Essentially, the story picks up right after we leave the trio at the end of the second movie. It follows two different storylines to start. One is Princess Leia, Chewbacca, and Lando who are desperately trying to rescue a frozen-in-carbonite Han Solo from Boba Fett’s ship.
The other story in Star Wars: Shadow of the Empire is around Luke Skywalker who has returned to Tattoine and is dealing with folks working for Jabba the Hutt, while also avoiding Darth Vader, as well as another criminal syndicate. Essentially, the story is a deck-setting opportunity to get everyone in place before Return of the Jedi while also explaining some of how Leia and Luke end up preparing to break Han out from Jabba’s clutches.
If the Star Wars folks are doing this live-action style then we would definitely see recastings for Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia, as well as Lando and others. This would, of course, be a major movie in the sense that except for prequels like Solo or the prequel trilogy, we haven’t really had this so far. Though it would fall somewhat in line with another scoop we had that a Luke Skywalker Jedi Academy project is also in the works. Time will tell how this all shakes out, but it could be one of the more exciting developments in the franchise to date.
