A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

Trade Paperback Edition cover art by Christopher Moeller. ©1997 Dark Horse Comics and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL) In 1996, almost a year before the theatrical release of  The Star Wars Trilogy: Special Edition, Lucasfilm's marketing division conceived a massive multimedia campaign called Shadows of the Empire. Centered on Steve Perry's eponymous novel set between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, the project included an original soundtrack album, Nintendo video game, a set of Kenner/Hasbro action figures, a behind the scenes book by Mark Cotta Vaz, Topps trading cards, and even references to its events in Brian Daley's Star Wars: Return of the Jedi – The Radio Drama.   In Steve Perry's own words, the unofficial tagline for this massive campaign was "Everything but the movie." "Everything but the movie" included, naturally, a comics adaptation, and Dark Horse Comics – an Oregon-based publisher which at the time owned the licensing ri...

Cover Art by: Drew Struzan. (C) 1996 Penguin Random House Books and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL)  Steve Perry's Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire , first published in 1996, is the centerpiece of a Lucasfilm multi-media marketing campaign that could be summed up with the tag line "Everything but the movie."   Not only was Perry assigned to write the novel, but Kenner (now Hasbro) rolled out a line of action figures, Dark Horse Comics published a multi-issue series, Nintendo released a console-based game for its Nintendo 64 system, and Joel McNeeley ( The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles ) composed an original score. In short, all that was missing was a feature film. And what a film (animated, of course) Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire would have been!   Although the novel is part of the Expanded Universe/Legends series that started with Timothy Zahn's Heir to the Empire, it's the first of the 1990s-era novels to explore the six-month or so time span betw...

Cover art by Drew Struzan. (C) 1996 Varese Sarabande Records and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL) In 1996, Lucasfilm gathered several authors, artists, and representatives from Hasbro and other licensees to discuss a huge multimedia project that was, in short, everything but the full-fledged filmed version of a Star Wars movie. To kick this ambitious campaign, writer Steve Perry was hired to write an original novel for Bantam Spectra that would be the core of the project called Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire. The novel. Photo Credit: www.mycomicshop.com. (C) 1996 Bantam Spectra and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL) The novel would be a stand-alone Expanded Universe novel, the first of the Bantam Spectra series to depict event between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jed i. All the other products, ranging from Hasbro's Kenner action figures to Nintendo 64 cartridges, would use Perry's novel as a starting point and expand the story, sticking to the essentials of the centra...