The name Rick McCallum will raise the blood pressure and set teeth to gnashing amongst some older generation of STAR WARS fans. They may argue that he was responsible for the devastation of countless nostalgia tinged childhoods after the travesty of the Special Editions and prequels. That he should have reigned in prequel director George Lucas’ excesses. That he should have had a firmer hand guiding the productions. That he should have said, “Now come on, George. Stop it now, that’s just silly.”

What are my personal thoughts being a member of that older generation? Well that’s not important right now because this is Movie News, and the news is that McCallum is to produce the feature-length adaptation of R’HA, a sci-fi project that had a humble beginning as a short film (which we’ll post at the bottom of the page). 

McCallum will be joined by STAR WARS: THE CLONE WARS producer Steve Tzirlin, and the original short film’s director Kaleb Lechowski, who shall be widening his directorial vision with this feature. The original short film follows a species of non-humans – the R’Ha – who defend a group of solar systems from continual hostile attacks. 

McCallum had this to say about the project. “What inspires me and our team is that there are no humans whatsoever in the film, and yet Kaleb has come up with a world that is so engaging and so alive and so real that it really is very different from anything else I have seen in the sci-fi world.  We want to make it as a European film, using VFX facilities from all over Central and Eastern Europe and Asia, and do it for a price that not only allows Kaleb total control of his unique vision, but is incomprehensible in the big-budget VFX world that we now live in!”

It sounds intriguing but I can’t help but wonder if today’s fickle audiences will balk at the lack of human characters. Time will tell.

Watch the original short in the player below…

Source: THR

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