Has Lucas already shot footage for the live-action show?

George Lucas was on Attack of the Show this evening. He mostly talked about 3-D and 3-D conversion, but also quite a bit on the live-action show.

Where is is? “It sits on the shelf. We have 50 hours and we’re just waiting to figure out a different way of making movies: A different technology we can use that will make it so it’s easy enough to make it feasible to shoot the show.” That’s pretty on line with what he’s said before.

You want a money shot? Here’s a money shot: “Right now it looks like the Star Wars features,” Lucas said. Looks like? Actual footage? Just tests? Effects? And what does that mean for those ’50 hours?’ We’ve assumed, in the past, that they were talking about scripts and concept art and the like, but this puts a whole new spin on things. I’m guessing it’s mostly for test purposes, but still, this puts things much further along than we suspected.

UPDATE 05/27: io9 contacted Lucasfilm about the whole ’50 hours’ thing, and they confirmed he was referring to the scripts. Could there still be test footage? I suppose, but I doubt LFL is going to say and none of us can be sure in any case.

“We have to figure out a way of making it for about a tenth the cost of the features, because it’s television,” Lucas goes on to say. “We’re working towards that… We will get there at some point, but it’s just a very difficult process. Obviously when we do figure this problem out it will dramatically effect a lot of movies.”

Timothy Zahn is on Facebook, reveals Choices, Heir short tidbits

The man responsible for jump-started the Expanded Universe (and thus getting many of us in or back into fans) is now on Facebook! Believe it or not, it’s his first official page in… Ever! We’re happy to see him, so go forth and ‘Like!’

You can let him know who you’d like to see featured in a short story, provided Dark Force Rising and The Last Command get the annotation treatment…

In the comments, he reveals a little about the story that will be in the new Heir to the Empire: “The story in Heir (“Crisis of Faith”) does have Fel in it. The story also acts as a link between Choices of One and Heir to the Empire.” Also, “Pellaeon plays a major role” in Choices of One.

Clone Wars S3 Blu-rays, DVDs coming October 25th?

The Blu-ray Blog reports a Amazon.ca pre-order page has appeared for The Clone Wars season three Blu-rays, giving a release date of October 25th for the box set. (There’s a page for DVDS as well.)

Nothing’s been formally announced yet, but the timing is similar to the S2 and S1 releases. (Thanks to Justin for the tip!)

Meanwhile, at Star Wars Weekends, the audience got a new peek at S4 and managed to wrangle a few tidbits out of Dave Filoni.