A radio dramatization of the original Star Wars film trilogy was produced in 1981, 1983, and 1996. The first two radio series, based on Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back, were produced and broadcast by National Public Radio (NPR) as part of NPR Playhouse. A dramatization of Return of the Jedi was produced by most of the same team and it was also broadcast on NPR.
The radio serials were made with the full cooperation of George Lucas, who, in exchange for a dollar each, sold the rights to KUSC-FM, the public radio affiliate at his alma mater, the University of Southern California (USC). Lucas also permitted the use of original sound effects and music from the films.
Overview Serial Episodes First aired Last aired Director(s) Screenwriter(s) Home station Star Wars 13 John Madden Brian Daley NPR/KUSC The Empire Strikes Back 10 Return of the Jedi 6
History
In the 1980s, radio drama was in decline in the United States. An associate dean of the University of California School of the Performing Arts, Richard Toscan, was keen to champion this art form. Toscan was supported by John Houseman, the producer responsible for Orson Welles's 1938 radio production of The War of the Worlds. He began with the dramatisation of short stories by Raymond Carver on KUSC-FM, a campus radio station affiliated to NPR. Following this production, Toscan collaborated with Houseman and NPR producer Frank Mankiewicz on a project to revive the fortunes of NPR Playhouse, the umbrella title for drama productions on NPR. At the suggestion of one of Toscan's students, Joel Rosenzweig, they developed an idea for adapting the 1977 epic space opera film Star Wars for radio. The popularity of Star Wars would certainly attract new, younger listeners, but they feared that the production costs would be prohibitively high. However, the production team's academic connections proved to be advantageous: USC is the alma mater of the writer and director of Star Wars, George Lucas, and Lucasfilm quickly granted the rights to KUSC, including the rights to the use of original Star Wars music and sound effects, for a token fee of one dollar.
Despite Lucasfilm's generous offer, NPR was still faced with the costs of writing scripts, hiring actors and renting studio space. With no funding available to cover the $200,000 budget, NPR entered into a co-production deal with the British broadcaster, the BBC, which had a long tradition of radio drama production. The BBC provided a production team, including director John Madden, and in exchange received broadcasting rights in the United Kingdom. From the outset, the NPR producers felt that the script would lend itself well to an episodic treatment, drawing on the format of the 1930s movie serials such as Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers that had originally inspired Lucas when he wrote Star Wars.
The American science fiction novelist Brian Daley was brought in to write the script. Daley had access to Lucas's early drafts of the Star Wars scripts, and expanded the narrative to include material which had been cut from the final edit of the film so that the 13-episode radio adaptation ran approximately four hours longer than the film version. Casting the audio serial was not as easy as had been hoped; while the producers were able to secure the actors Mark Hamill and Anthony Daniels from the original film, Harrison Ford was unavailable as he was filming Raiders of the Lost Ark at the time, and his place was taken by Perry King, an actor who once auditioned for the part of Han Solo in the 1977 film.
Led by Mankiewicz, NPR promoted the Star Wars serial with a successful publicity campaign, attracting coverage in Playboy, The New York Times and Time, who hailed the production with the headline, "Radio drama is making a resounding comeback". Star Wars was launched at a special NPR event at the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles, in which the drama was played under a starry light show. Broadcasts began in March 1981 to critical acclaim, and the drama instantly attracted 750,000 new listeners, representing a 40 percent increase in NPR audiences and a quadrupling of the network's youth audience. On the basis of this success, KUSC went on to produce popular adaptations of the sequel, The Empire Strikes Back. An adaptation of Return of the Jedi followed over a decade later, and it was produced by many of the same people who produced the KUSC/NPR productions.
Canonicity and continuity The Star Wars radio dramas were authorized adaptations of Lucas's scripts, and they were originally considered canon. Commentators argued that while the radio dramas varied somewhat from the film scripts, they should be considered canon insofar as they did not directly contradict the films. However, in 2012, The Walt Disney Company acquired Lucasfilm and the rights to Star Wars. In 1994, Lucasfilm's continuity editor, Allan Kausch, stated that "'Gospel', or 'canon' as we refer to it, includes the screenplays, the films, the radio dramas and the novelizations." In 2014 Lucasfilm announced that previous works which were set in the Expanded Universe (including comics, novels and videogames) were to be re-branded as Star Wars Legends, and only the Skywalker saga and The Clone Wars film and television series were to be considered canon, in addition to new spin-off works.
The first radio drama relates the backstory which immediately precedes the narrative of the original 1977 film, and this backstory overlaps with the Legends novels Jedi Dawn and Rebel Dawn and the 2016 film Rogue One. Commentators have since noted that the canon story which is introduced in Rogue One conflicts with episode 2 of the radio drama, "Points of Origin". In the radio drama, the Death Star plans are obtained after a Rebel attack on an Imperial convoy; Rebel agents then transmit the Death Star plans from the planet Toprawa to the Tantive IV. In Rogue One, the plans are transmitted from Scarif, where they were archived, to Admiral Raddus' flagship, the Profundity. The plans are then taken on board the docked Tantive IV, which launches before Darth Vader can recapture them.
In 2015 another adaptation of A New Hope was published, The Princess, the Scoundrel, and the Farm Boy. The author, Alexandra Bracken, stated that she was reading the Expanded Universe to try to "sneak elements in" to the canon and adapted material from the radio drama.
Star Wars
Star Wars is a 13-part (5 hour, 56 minute) radio serial originally broadcast on National Public Radio on March 2, 1981. It was adapted by Brian Daley from the 1977 film, and directed by John Madden, with music by John Williams and sound design for Lucasfilm by Ben Burtt. The serial was recorded in 1981 at Westlake Recording Studios in West Hollywood, California.
Daley adapted the script partly using material from earlier drafts of Lucas's scripts, and restored several scenes cut from the final edit of the film, as well as adding original new scenes created specially for the audio version. The narrative of the first two episodes takes place entirely before the opening scene of the 1977 film, and expands the background to events leading up to the capture of the Tantive IV spacecraft above the planet Tatooine. Episode 1, largely based on cut scenes from the original, explores the life of Luke Skywalker on Tatooine. During the story, Luke's skyhopper (a vehicle seen in the background in Luke's garage during the film) is damaged during a desert race; Luke sees the distant Star Destroyer battle in the sky; and he is reunited with his childhood friend, Biggs Darklighter. Episode 2, made up of material written entirely by Daley, provides backstory to Princess Leia's acquisition of the Death Star plans from agents of the Rebel Alliance on the planet Toprawa. In scenes set on the planet Alderaan, Leia discusses the plans with her father, Prestor Organa, and determines to go in search of Obi-Wan Kenobi. Later episodes mostly follow the storyline of the film, but additional scenes expand the narrative. In one scene, Han Solo has a meeting with an agent of Jabba the Hutt called Heater; this dialogue is based on a scene in which Solo meets a humanoid Jabba in the docking bay, cut from the original film but later reinstated in the 1997 Special Edition in modified form. In another episode, Daley inserts a conversation in which Admiral Motti attempts to convince Grand Moff Tarkin to leverage the Death Star as a political tool.
When the series was re-issued on NPR several years later, it was retitled The New Hope (as opposed to the official alternate title, A New Hope), keeping in line with the subtitles of the episodes of the original trilogy films.
Episode titles: "A Wind to Shake the Stars" "Points of Origin" "Black Knight, White Princess, and Pawns" "While Giants Mark Time" "Jedi that Was, Jedi To Be" "The Millennium Falcon Deal" "The Han Solo Solution" "Death Star's Transit" "Rogues, Rebels and Robots" "The Luke Skywalker Initiative" "The Jedi Nexus" "The Case for Rebellion" "Force and Counter Force"
Cast Several actors reprised their roles in the film. Mark Hamill and Anthony Daniels returned to reprise their roles as Luke Skywalker and C-3PO, respectively.
The Empire Strikes Back
The success of the first series led to a 10-part (4 hour, 22 minute) series based on the 1980 film The Empire Strikes Back, again written by Daley and directed by Madden. It was recorded in 1982 at A&R Studios, New York City.Daley, Brian. Empire Strikes Back: The Original Radio Drama, Mass-market paperback/Titan Books Ltd., 1995, p. 3. The series debuted on NPR on February 14, 1983.
Like the preceding series, The Empire Strikes Back expands on the movie's story and incorporates new scenes such an Imperial attack on a Rebel convoy taking place before the film's original opening scene and a tense conversation between Solo and Skywalker when the two are stranded in the Hoth wastelands.
National Public Radio's promoted the series in part by getting Craig Claiborne to create his version of Yoda's rootleaf stew recipe, which the Jedi Master serves Luke in the hut on Dagobah. The recipe ran in magazines and newspapers across the country.
Episode titles: "Freedom's Winter" "The Coming Storm" "A Question of Survival" "Fire and Ice" "The Millennium Falcon Pursuit" "Way of the Jedi" "New Allies, New Enemies" "Dark Lord's Fury" "Gambler's Choice" "The Clash of Lightsabers"
Cast Billy Dee Williams reprised Lando Calrissian, and John Lithgow played Yoda at the same time Madden was directing Lithgow in the play Beyond Therapy. Hamill and Daniels returned to voice Luke and C-3PO.
The supporting cast again included David Alan Grier and also included Sam McMurray, Steven Markle, Stephen D. Newman, John Pielmeier, Geoffrey Pierson, Gary Tacon, and Jerry Zaks. Ken Hiller provides the narration.
Return of the Jedi