The Cancelled Darth Plaguies novel

Why would they cancel a novel that so many of us were looking forward too? Are they still gonna make it eventually, or is it completely scrapped?

 

Completely scrapped:

http://blogs.starwars.com/eeusuestornii/10

 

1. Controversy
2. Difficult to market to non-EU fans...
2B. The difficulty of selling Darth Bane to non-EU fans...
3. New and different ideas for the direction in writing.
4. Change of heart from writers.
5. Change of heart from LFL staff.
6. George said so.

Take your pick or make a combination.

 

I say 5 and/or 6.

 

I am certain it is 6.

 

Yeah, I agree it sounds like #6. Seems to me like George is saving the Sith backstory for potential use in the TV series, and changed his mind on the novel after having given a preliminary go ahead. The fact that they revealed Plagueis was a Muun on the press release and claim that that fact is still canon even after the cancellation makes it sound that tidbit came from the man himself.

(Of course, knowing George, he doesn't have any idea what the frack a Muun is and probably just said Plagueis is one of them skinny-headed Separatist dudes. )

 

Well, I feel better now that it's #6. Means there's still a future for his origin being told. Just not in book form.

Darth Plagueis is John Kerry?!

 

Uh, no offense, but 2/2B are pretty nonsensical, since most "non-EU" fans don't buy the novels anyway.

 

With every book, the target audience to reach are the people who are not loyal readers. LFL and DR can count on a certain number of copies sold just based on the running fan base...it is the books that surpass this, and get people who haven't picked up a book before or haven't in a long time, that they reach for...thus why you have exclamatory synopsis on dusters and "Bestseller" bolded on covers.

With each of these books, you will have a mom looking for a gift for her teenager, or a bored college kid, or any slew of other reasons people come to the EU. But one thing is marked and clear...books with the Big 3 sell...especially when they are on the cover...now many a EU-fan moans about this cliche...but it's true...and it's also why Luke, Leia, and Han aren't dead or retired yet.

Flash that into Darth Bane...a book based in risky regions...a book without any characters from OT or PT! IMO one of the reasons there were so many KOTORish references was so that there was SOMETHING familiar to fans who are not well versed in EU.

Now I am certainly not privy to sales totals for BaneOD, but I know what I saw in my neck of the woods...and that was a slew of copies with "opening week" discounts, and they were still there the next month, and the next. Things like Outbound Flight and Betrayl were one or none. But you tie that to the cancelling of a project we all thought was pretty well along...sales concerns is something that should never be discounted.

 

It didn't help that; apart from Apatros, P.O.D. did't offer anything new, other than Revan, the feeble Comic and KOTOR "Lightsaber Sequencing, and trips to Lehon" retcons. While an entertaining read, it was nothing more than a merger of those aforementioned sources. But I liked it enough to read it in a day.


As for Plagueis...

I was looking forward to that period of time being filled in. We've been told how brutal Maul's training was, but I wonder... how much worse was Sidious'indoctrination? How ancient was Plagueis? How many Apprentices did he have? What system did he control? How did they plot the murder of the Senator from the Chommel Sector? How much did Plagueis teach Sidious about the ways of the Jedi, versus what he learned from befriending Ronhar Kim?

Most of all... whom did Darth Plagueis once call,

Mahhhstahhh..." and what do we learn of him/her?

 

Plaguies' Master was originally a Chef from the Muppetry system in the Mid Rim. He went by the Alias Darth Swedish Chef

 

I looked forward to this even more than the next-gen game, SW-F.U.

 

Me too.

 

[image=http://images.wikia.com/starwars/images/4/4f/San_hill.jpg]=[image=http://www.tunezine.com/IMG/jpg/john_kerry.jpg]?

 

[image=http://www.swg1.net/encyclo/logo/carlist-rieekan.jpg][image=http://www.blakems.com/i/hillkerryPic.jpg]

There's a conspiracy going on here!

 

Actually, I would think that a novel like this would be more interesting to the casual reader than most of the stuff that comes out. If you had never read a Star Wars novel, every book after Vector Prime in the sequence of NJO, DNT, and LoTF would seem to pretty much be "out". Legacy comics would seem to be more interesting to the hardcore fan, with knowing what a Yuuzhan Vong is and having theories about Krayt's identity and all. Darth Plagueis had a breif mention in the RoTS movie. Non-EU fans might want to know more about him. Mindor is something that non-EU fans might jump on....it's just a one shot about Skywalker. Anything remotely tied to the movies with no other background necessary is probably more likely to grab a new fan than anything that is in a "Series".

Carnage

 

And with what I was hearing Qui-Gon, Dooku and Sidious were all supposed to play parts so it would've had movie characters on the cover. I was really looking forward to this one.... :-(

 

That was probably the reason why it was cancelled.

If Luceno would have been writing a novel about just Darth Plagueis, there would probably have not been any major problems. But now he - and DR too, probably - wanted to write what would have been pretty much the Bible of SW: It would have had everything: Plagueis and his quest for immortality, perhaps the creation of Anakin; Qui-Gon and his encounter with the Shaman of the Whills and how he learned how to become a Force Ghost; the corruption of Dooku and finally the past of Darth Sidious would have been revealed to some extent.

I guess that when George Lucas heard about this he thought that Luceno and DR were invading the heart of what he considers his own territory in SW. Luceno could have defined and moulded much of Lucas´ own ideas to his own liking with this novel. No wonder it got cancelled.

 

What happens to this book now? I mean, parts of it must have been written, right?

 

Well done!

All we get was Plagueis was a Muun. After that... zippo.