What is a blockbuster? Should it be a movie? Does it really need to be, or is the movie just the delivery system for all of this other merch that the fans really want?īut its real purpose was much more practical than that. You can read the project as a kind of metafictional joke if you want to a sly commentary on the state of film marketing and licensing in the ‘90s that seems particularly prescient today. It had all the tie-ins you’d expect from a major feature film release - a novel (and a junior novelisation), a video game, a comic book series, a trading card set, multiple toy lines, and even a soundtrack and a ‘making of’ book - but no blockbuster movie (or even a cartoon) to anchor it. The easiest and most obvious way to describe the ambitious Shadows of the Empire project is that it was ‘a movie without the movie’.

In 1996, with Bill Clinton in the White House, the Chicago Bulls breaking records, Independence Day busting blocks, the Spice Girls’ debut single flying off the shelves, and Elmos being tickled all over the United States, Lucasfilm decided to re-insert itself into the conversation with Shadows of the Empire. 20 long years ago, in a pop cultural landscape far, far away, Lucasfilm tried something that had never been done before.

Shadows of the empire theme