John Fredrick Parker
Donor
With the latest possible PoD, how could the prequel trilogy have begun development and production several years earlier, so that the next SW movie was released in the year 1993?
Just a few changes for movies instead of TV.By all accounts, George Lucas intended to continue creating big-budget Hollywood films (like Star Wars and Indiana Jones) after the release of Return of the Jedi. His non-stop construction on the very expensive, state of the art Skywalker Ranch during this time period suggested as much. However, his divorce with Marcia Lucas - which lost him 30 to 50 million dollars depending on the source - eliminated a lot of necessary cash flow.![]()
“It was very hard, the divorce kind of destroyed me. It did take me a couple of years to sort of unwind myself and come out of it.” Lucas reported on an interview years later. Indeed, he stepped down as President of Lucasfilm in 1984 to “focus on producing films” - the most notable of which was Howard the Duck in 1986.
Despite Lucas’ personal and financial troubles, Star Wars was actually performing quite well starting with West End Games release of the Star Wars Roleplaying Game in 1987. The addition of supplemental material (intended to support player’s “original adventures”) gave Star Wars a mild boost in popularity as fans of the trilogy became interested in more new details of the Star Wars universe. This resulted in many questions being directed at George Lucas - who had declared the pre-Star Wars era to be off limits to official writings in the Star Wars Universe.
By all accounts Lucas did not want to return to the Star Wars Universe himself, and initially pushed these types of questions off. It wasn’t until the release of Timothy Zahn’s Heir to the Empire (the first of a “sequel trilogy” of books) that Lucas began to see the money-making potential in the Star Wars universe.
“ [I realised the] Star Wars audience was still alive--it hadn’t disappeared after eight years, I decided that if I didn’t do the backstory then, I never would. So I committed to it.” Lucas said many years later. What followed was a period of writing wherein Lucas created an extensive time-line detailing the life of Obi-Wan Kenobi, thereby assembling the elements for about 70 episodes, from the Clone Wars up to Star Wars.
In early 1992 Variety and multiple other sources reported that ABC had picked up the pilot for George Lucas’ Star Wars: The Young Obi-Wan Kenobi Chronicles.
It is telling that even here, Lucas couldn't start on writing and seriously getting into Star Wars again until the Admiral Thrawn series at least started (1991); likely an indication of just how hard the OP challenge is.Here's a start: