(Photo: LucasArts)

It seems that two projects exploring the dark and gritty side of the Star Wars universe, both of which were presumed dead with the acquisition of Lucasfilm by Disney, may be showing signs of life once more.

SlashFilm asked Lucasfilm producer Kathleen Kennedy what ever became of the work done for the live action TV show being developed under the working title Star Wars: Underground. Here’s what she had to say, bringing up the canceled videogame Star Wars 1313 in the process:

No, interestingly enough, that’s an area we’ve spent a lot of time, reading through the material that he developed is something we very much would like to explore. And there was 1313 the game, where there was…

At this point, SlashFilm mentions the wonderful concept art for Star Wars 1313 that was released online.

Unbelievable. So our attitude is, we don’t want to throw any of that stuff away. It’s gold. And it’s something we’re spending a lot of time looking at, pouring through, discussing, and we may very well develop those things further. We definitely want to.

For those who are a little lost at this point, Star Wars: Underground was a live action TV series first revealed at Star Wars Celebration III in 2005. The series was aiming for a 2009 premiere, and George Lucas had ambitious plans for the series to run for 400 episodes, shooting in a state-of-the-art studio built in his own backyard. The series would have been set between Episodes III and IV, and would have explored the seedier side of the capital planet of Coruscant, adapting a more noir tone than had been seen in the Star Wars universe before.

Pre-production began on the series, and Lucas is rumored to have written the first 100 episodes before his plans were dashed, supposedly by angry neighbors. The project was shelved, but the assets that had been developed were eventually repurposed by LucasArts for Star Wars 1313, a videogame with a similar tone that was named for Coruscant’s Level 1313, an area notorious for its criminal element. Star Wars 1313 was revealed at E3 in 2012, with footage of a nameless bounty hunter exploring Coruscant’s underbelly. Rumor has it that the bounty hunter would eventually have been revealed to be Boba Fett during the early days of his career. Unfortunately, development on Star Wars 1313 was ceased when Disney purchased Lucafilm and dissolved LucasArts.

So what does all of this mean? The Star Wars 1313 trademark was allowed to lapse, but Level 1313 still exists in the new canon, having appeared in Star Wars: The Clone Wars and the novels Dark Disciple and Aftermath. Maybe Underworld and 1313 will be put back into full development, or maybe the work done on them will be repurposed once more. There seems to be a never-ending stream of rumors concerning a live-action Star Wars series on Netflix, or a Boba Fett spinoff movie, so there’s no shortage of outlets for this material to be used with.