NYCC ’08: Sansweet talks live-action with MTV

The new show will reveal the greasy, seamy underbelly of Star Wars,” Steve Sansweet told MTV at New York Comic Con yesterday. That lends a little more weight to the “Deadwood meets The Sopranos” rumors… Also, a bit on the production schedule:

Sansweet said the initial writers of the show have been selected and “they’ve had their first couple sessions working with George and [producer] Rick [McCallum].” So when can we expect all of this? “We’ll see it in production probably sometime in 2009. Hopefully the series will be on by 2010,” said Sansweet.

I’m just on my way out the door, but I’ll be updating our live-action roundup post later tonight.

NYCC ’08: Robot Chicken: Star Wars DVD details

IGN reports a few Star Wars tidbits from the Robot Chicken panel:

IMAGE: Robot Chicken: Star Wars DVD

  • The Robot Chicken: Star Wars DVD will contain two hours of bonus materials.
  • And seven commentary tracks!
  • The Star Wars special took them fourteen weeks to prepare – an entire season (20 episodes) generally takes eleven months.

The DVD comes out May 20th.

Original trilogy beats King Kong in ratings

Another Jackson vs. Lucas contest this weekend, and the results came out pretty much the same. TNT was running Peter Jackson’s King Kong, and Spike’s broadcasting of the original trilogy came out on top by a pretty hefty margin: A New Hope pulled 2.5 million, Empire Strikes Back had 3.5 million and Return of the Jedi got 4.12 million viewers (just short of Revenge of the Sith’s 4.25 million) while King Kong‘s multiple airings only brought in 2 million at best. Poor Kong: It’s not a horrible movie, but it simply doesn’t have the rewatch potential of SW and LOTR.

Spike will continue to air one Star Wars film every Sunday through May 25th.

So a farmboy, a Jedi, and a Cylon walk into a bar…

IMAGE: Episode IV

It’s Friday, April 11th, and that means one thing: A New Hope is airing on Spike tonight at 8/7C. (Okay, two things: a new episode of Battlestar Galactica at 10/9C.)

Gamers will also want to tune back in to Spike at midnight for GameTrailers TV, which will be showing another The Force Unleashed preview (“the world premiere of the duel mode in the Wii”) and SoulCalibur IV game footage of Yoda and Vader. (You can also catch all that at GameTrailers.com later.)

And don’t forget to vote in our poll on if you’re watching the movies on Spike! It expires Sunday night.