Star Wars (radio series)

• 1. Introduction

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  On the 2nd of March 1981, a story that had already conquered movie screens came to life in a completely different way. The Star Wars radio series debuted on National Public Radio, and within days had drawn 750,000 new listeners to the network. That was a 40 percent jump in overall NPR audiences and a quadrupling of its youth audience in a single stroke. How did a space opera film become a radio serial? And why did George Lucas sell the rights for a dollar?

• 2. A Dollar a Drama

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  Richard Toscan, an associate dean at the University of California School of the Performing Arts, wanted to rescue radio drama from its slow fade in American culture. He had a powerful ally in John Houseman, the producer behind Orson Welles's legendary 1938 radio broadcast of The War of the Worlds. Together with NPR producer Frank Mankiewicz, they set out to revive NPR Playhouse, the network's umbrella label for dramatic productions. The idea to adapt Star Wars came from one of Toscan's students, Joel Rosenzweig.

  The production team worried that the costs would be far beyond reach. Then came an unexpected break. George Lucas had studied at the University of Southern California, and his alma mater's public radio affiliate, KUSC-FM, was the station they were approaching. Lucasfilm sold the rights to KUSC for a token fee of one dollar per series, and also permitted the use of original sound effects and music from the films. The $200,000 budget still had to come from somewhere, though. NPR struck a co-production deal with the BBC, which had deep roots in radio drama. The BBC supplied a production team including director John Madden, and in exchange received UK broadcasting rights.

• 3. Brian Daley and the Expanded Story

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  American science fiction novelist Brian Daley wrote the scripts for all three series. Daley was given access to Lucas's early drafts, and he used them to restore scenes that had been cut before the film ever reached theaters. The first Star Wars serial stretched to 13 episodes running roughly 5 hours and 56 minutes, making it approximately four hours longer than the film itself.

  The opening two episodes take place entirely before the 1977 film begins. Episode 1 follows Luke Skywalker's life on Tatooine: his skyhopper is damaged during a desert race, he watches a distant Star Destroyer battle in the sky, and he reunites with his childhood friend Biggs Darklighter. Episode 2, written entirely by Daley, shows how Princess Leia obtained the Death Star plans from Rebel agents on the planet Toprawa, then discussed them with her father, Prestor Organa, on Alderaan before setting out to find Obi-Wan Kenobi.

  Daley also restored a scene in which Han Solo meets an agent of Jabba the Hutt named Heater, a version of a cut scene that showed Solo encountering a humanoid Jabba in a docking bay. That cut scene would eventually reappear in the 1997 Special Edition of the film. The production team drew consciously on the format of 1930s movie serials like Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers, which had themselves inspired Lucas when he wrote the original screenplay.

• 4. Cast and Crew

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  Mark Hamill and Anthony Daniels returned from the original film to voice Luke Skywalker and C-3PO. Harrison Ford was unavailable; he was filming Raiders of the Lost Ark at the time. His place was taken by Perry King, an actor who had once auditioned for the role of Han Solo in the 1977 film. The Star Wars serial was recorded at Westlake Recording Studios in West Hollywood, California.

  For The Empire Strikes Back, Billy Dee Williams reprised Lando Calrissian, and John Lithgow voiced Yoda. Director John Madden was concurrently directing Lithgow in the play Beyond Therapy at the same time. The Empire Strikes Back series was recorded at A&R Studios in New York City and debuted on NPR on the 14th of February 1983.

  By the time Return of the Jedi was produced in 1996, the cast had shifted. Joshua Fardon took over as Luke, and Arye Gross replaced Billy Dee Williams as Lando. Ed Begley Jr. voiced Boba Fett, and Edward Asner, speaking only in Huttese, voiced Jabba the Hutt. Anthony Daniels was the only actor to appear in all three feature films and all three radio dramas. Ken Hiller served as narrator across all three series.

• 5. Publicity and Promotion

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  Frank Mankiewicz led NPR's publicity push for the first serial, and the campaign landed coverage in Playboy, The New York Times, and Time magazine, which ran the headline "Radio drama is making a resounding comeback." The series was launched at a special event held at the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles, where the drama played under a starry light show.

  For The Empire Strikes Back, NPR took a more unusual promotional route. The network enlisted Craig Claiborne to create his own version of the rootleaf stew that Yoda serves Luke in his hut on Dagobah. The recipe ran in magazines and newspapers across the country. In July 1981, BBC Radio 1 broadcast the Star Wars radio adaptation to UK audiences, fulfilling the terms of the original co-production deal.

  Decades later, the series generated spin-off merchandise of its own. In 2013 and 2015, Topps released two special sets of trading cards called Star Wars Illustrated, featuring artwork depicting scenes from the radio dramas. The same artwork illustrated two collectors' editions of the Original Radio Drama released by HighBridge Audiobooks.

• 6. Return of the Jedi and Brian Daley's Death

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  A Jedi adaptation nearly did not happen at all. Plans collapsed in the 1980s due to a financial disagreement between KUSC and Lucasfilm, and federal funding cuts further complicated NPR's situation. It was not until 1996 that Highbridge Audio, the company that had released the earlier series on tape and CD, produced a six-part Return of the Jedi adaptation. The production returned to Westlake Recording Studios.

  Brian Daley wrote the script, but he died only hours after recording concluded. The show's cast had recorded a special get-well message for Daley after he left the studio, not knowing he would never hear it. That message was later included in the collector's edition box set. The series was dedicated to his memory.

  Additional material was contributed by John Whitman, who made changes needed to align the story with the newly developing prequel plans, as well as revisions requested by the director and cast. One notable creative dispute during production came when Anthony Daniels rejected a scripted scene pairing C-3PO with Boba Fett in Jabba's palace, feeling the golden droid should not be friendly with a bounty hunter. Fett was replaced by the character Arica, revealed to be Mara Jade in disguise, drawn from Timothy Zahn's story in Tales from Jabba's Palace.

• 7. Canon, Continuity, and Rogue One

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  Lucasfilm's own continuity editor, Allan Kausch, stated in 1994 that canon included the screenplays, the films, the radio dramas, and the novelizations. The radio dramas had been authorized adaptations from the start, and commentators generally held that they belonged to the official story as long as they did not directly contradict the films.

  That status changed in 2014, after The Walt Disney Company acquired Lucasfilm in 2012. Lucasfilm announced that prior works set in the Expanded Universe, including comics, novels, and video games, would be re-branded as Star Wars Legends. Only the Skywalker saga films, The Clone Wars film and television series, and new spin-off works would be considered canon going forward.

  The 2016 film Rogue One introduced a direct conflict with episode 2 of the radio drama, "Points of Origin." In that episode, Rebel agents obtain the Death Star plans in an attack on an Imperial convoy, then transmit them from the planet Toprawa to the Tantive IV. Rogue One shows a different account: the plans are archived on the planet Scarif, transmitted to Admiral Raddus's flagship the Profundity, then carried aboard the docked Tantive IV before Darth Vader can intercept them. In 2015, author Alexandra Bracken noted that while writing The Princess, the Scoundrel, and the Farm Boy, she had been reading the Expanded Universe specifically to find elements she could work into her adaptation of A New Hope.