One of the last Star Wars projects that never saw the light of day was Star Wars Detours. Lucasfilm, together with Robot Chicken’s Seth Green and Matthew Senreich, conceived of this comedic animated series around 2009. That’s three years before their sale to Disney totally changed their Star Wars output. Despite producing 39 episodes, all those episodes remain locked in a vault. All that’s left is this sizzle reel.
But we’ve now learned one bit of information that really makes us wish someone would unlock that vault. Via /film, we’ve learned that none other than “Weird Al” Yankovic had written tons of original new songs for Star Wars Detours. All for what would have been the show’s third season. Yankovic shared what might have been on Connor Ratliff’s The George Lucas Talk Show. Here’s what he had to say:
We were working on a Star Wars musical, that was a third-season show, we were writing songs, and all of a sudden, it was like, ‘This is not gonna happen.’ […] I don’t know that I’m allowed [to talk about it]. There were, gosh, at least half a dozen or more songs as part of the musical and the various characters in the show. We actually recorded them singing their songs, and that was about a week before we found out that the show was not happening.
From the sound of things, it seems as if season three was going the full-blown musical route. Anyone who has ever listened to Weird Al’s parody Star Wars songs like “Yoda” knows how brilliant they are. It’s just sad to think of similar ones out there locked away forever. The cast for this show included folks like Felicia Day, Donald Faison, Zachary Levi, and Joel McHale. And last but not least, Seth MacFarlane as the Emperor, reprising his Robot Chicken role. We already know that guy can sing.
It’s one thing for a show like this to receive a cancellation notice in pre-production. That’s common. But with nearly forty episodes done, it’s weird that it’s stayed vaulted for so long. Especially with Disney+ needing content all the time. At the time of the Disney acquisition in 2012, it was understandable why they would have hit pause. After all, when you’re about to relaunch the saga, the first thing out of the gate you want is probably not a parody of it. But surely enough time has passed. It seems wrong to deprive the world of several Weird Al Star Wars songs, all just waiting for us to hear them.
