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Without a movie element, Lucasfilm producers wanted a story set between Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back that starred the core Star Wars characters. Meanwhile, George Lucas' Star WarsВ prequel trilogy percolated behind the scenes as the Special Editions readied for re-release. Lucasfilm seriously began collecting Star Wars stories into an 'Expanded Universe' continuity in the early '90s, a necessity as their various licensing arms spun off new plots that revisited the content of the original trilogy for a new generation. This is how it happened, and then disappeared from Star WarsВ mythology forever. If George Lucas' movies served as the Star Wars universe's Big Bang, the Shadows of the Empire project was its first telescope, a device that focused the efforts of multiple authors, artists, and game-makers on creating a single story. With the Star Wars machine running at full tilt once again, thanks to the gargantuan success of Rogue One, and no end of sequels, spinoffs, and marketing synergies in sight, the 20-year-old movie-without-a-movie, which featured unprecedented cooperation between Lucasfilm divisions and select partners, feels like an even bigger milestone. By the end of the year, the lineup had swelled to include toys, trading cards, a Nintendo 64 video game, and even a trailer - aired exclusively on QVC. First came Perry's Shadows of the Empire novel, Dark Horse Comics' Shadows of the Empire series, and the Shadows of the Empire concept album. When the epic event - dubbed Shadows of the Empire and set between The Empire Strikes Back and The Return of the Jedi - launched in the spring of 1996, the closely tied-together pieces that made up the series could be found virtually everywhere except local cineplexes.

'The Lucasfilm experience was all-encompassing,' Perry told me over email this month, and he's not exaggerating. without actually making a new Star Wars movie. Out of those brainstorming sessions - attended by Bantam author Steve Perry and representatives from LucasArts, among others - emerged a 25-page outline for a multimedia event designed to achieve the scale of a new Star Wars movie.

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On the agenda: how to invigorate a lucrative movie franchise that hadn't released a movie for more than a decade. In late 1994, LucasFilm held a series of top-secret meetings with Star Wars licensees.

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