Rick McCallum spoke with Star Wars Insider magazine about the upcoming live action Star Wars TV series:

McCallum said, “The series will be about brand new characters, a group of people we haven’t seen yet, except Boba Fett, who will be an instrumental part of it. The series will also showcase other bounty hunters.” The series will focus on “what happens to an empire. It’s a much darker, much more character-based thing.” He says the series won’t be as plot-driven as the films.

The hardest part for the team is making the series “look like a feature on a television budget, with all new characters, new environments, new planets, and trying to keep the storyline alive for a lot of people.”

While McCallum said he hopes they’ll have the scripts ready by the end of next month, there’s no way right now to know how much the WGA strike will impact the feasibility of getting this show off the ground. Since the goal seems to be the Fall 2009 season, at least they have a little breathing room.

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Family Guy Presents: Blue Harvest was released on DVD on Tuesday, Jan. 15. The DVD bonus features include four minutes of previously unseen footage, an uncensored audio track and an interview with George Lucas.

View clips of Family Guy Blue Harvest

Here is more on the DVD’s Special Features:

The extras really push this disc over the edge though; they’ve put together a great batch of extras that make this one episode disc still worth a purchase. First up is a commentary track with Seth MacFarlane and a handful of writers, directors, and producers. There’s at least ten people on this track, and everyone’s got good things to say. Stories about production are told, tidbits about the animation, and the crew’s huge affection for Star Wars is made extremely evident. Definitely worth a listen.

Next is a conversation between Seth MacFarlane and George Lucas. This runs about 12 minutes, and is exactly what it sound like; Seth and George discussing the episode, Star Wars, and their careers. MacFarlane asks lots of silly, and sometimes serious questions. Surprisingly, Lucas is on board with all this, and matches MacFarlane’s humor with some of his own every time. There’s lots of good stuff here, the best of which being MacFarlane humming pieces of Star Wars music and asking Lucas where it appears in the trilogy.

The second featurette on the disc is a 20-minute making of that includes animatics, storyboards and interviews from everyone involved. It doesn’t really delve into the making of the special all that much, but you do find out some cool information about the episode. Much of this information is explained in better detail on the commentary track, but this is still a good little feature.

However, one of the most interesting bonuses is the Animatic version of the episode. An animatic, for those out of the loop, is a rough pencil version of the episode, much like a storyboard, with the audio track included. I usually dislike animatic versions of animated shows, but this is actually very special. Instead of just the regular audio track set to storyboards, the audio track on the animatic presents alternate dialogue, often with alternate versions of scenes, as well as some deleted sequences. This is most certainly a treat to see for fans of the episode, and definitely worth a watch.

Finally, we have the Family Guy Star Wars clip show, which goes from episode one to the most recent episodes with (almost) every Star Wars joke ever made in the series. It runs ten minutes; they’ve made a lot of Star Wars jokes. This is fun, but I was a bit disappointed; it leaves out some of the most blatent Star Wars jokes from the series, including the scene from the Season 4 episode “Blind Ambition” where Peter gets a medal in an obvious parody of the ending to Episode 4. While this clip show is incomplete, it’s still a fun bonus for fans of the show.

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