According to Lucasfilm Licensing president Howard Roffman, Shadows of the Empire actually rose out of an opportunity which presented itself after Lucas adjusted his Episode I writing schedule. "At the time, the idea was that he was going to release Episode I in 1997 for the 20th anniversary of Star Wars," says Roffman. "Around the same time, he got this idea to bring the original Star Wars back to the theaters, and we would do that in 1996 as kind of a prelude to Episode I. Well, lo and behold, as George gets down the road in 1995, the script isn't progressing as quickly as he thought, so we faced the bitter reality that there's no way we're going to get the film done for 1997. At that point, it made much more sense to move the Special Edition release to 1997 for the 20th anniversary, which left us empty in 1996."
With the momentum of the planned 1996 Special Edition releases still at full bore, Roffman decided to plot out a new strategy for 1996. "I went back to my group in Licensing and called everyone together and said, 'Ok, we just got the rug pulled out from under us in 1996, so what are we going to do to keep the plate spinning?' So we put our heads together and thought, ok, what media do we have at our control, and how do we communicate with people? We thought, well, we communicate with people through books, through toys, and through video games -- and up to that point, all those things were kind of pursuing their own direction. So we thought, what if we put them all together and came up with a really significant story that would be big news for fans and that all these different media could play off of?"
Rather than placing the storyline outside the classic trilogy, Roffman and his team thought that going between two films presented the most unique opportunities. "The ones that were the most interesting to go between were Empire and Jedi, because between Star Wars and Empire, there's too much that Luke doesn't know, so the stories can't really play off of all the richness of what goes on in the Star Wars saga as a whole. Between V and VI is perfect because Luke's Jedi powers have advanced significantly between the two, and Vader's on his trail -- there's all kinds of things that are happening that gave you the fodder for an interesting story."
Culling the marketing and licensing resources Lucasfilm had at its disposal, Roffman began framing the Shadows of the Empire campaign. "We started pulling everybody together -- the book and comic people loved it because it was an integrated new story, LucasArts liked it because it gave them a hook for a game, and Kenner and Galoob bought into it on the toy front."
The key, of course, was coming up with a compelling story. "We went out with Bantam and hired Steve Perry, and Lucy Wilson, Sue Rostoni and I worked really closely with Steve and editor Tom Dupree to come up with the storyline. We felt that we had to involve organized crime and expose a segment of that world that hadn't been explored before in our Star Wars stories. And because of the pillars established by the films and our overriding concern with continuity, we created a very tricky obstacle course for working in the Star Wars galaxy. You knew that Luke Skywalker doesn't get killed, that Darth Vader doesn't get killed, and that Han wasn't going to get rescued. But I think with all that, we still managed to create a pretty suspenseful book and story."
