After
Star Wars was released to tremendous box
office success in 1977, a renaissance of "space
operas" began to be developed the world over
from companies interested in capitalizing on the
renewed interested in the genre. Toho had already
rushed into production their first such feature
in 1977 called The
War in Space, beating Star Wars to
the punch which wouldn't debut in Japan until Summer
of 1978. Before The
War in Space (1977) was released, though,
producers Tomoyuki
Tanaka and Fumio Tanaka had already begun considering
another feature in the genre.
In 1977, Toho began very early planning on their
next "space opera": Battle of the Galactic
Empire. The film was to be based on the 1950's
novels and short stories by Isaac Asimov in his
Galatic Empire series, which would later become
part of the Foundation series. Despite interest
from the two producers, though, the concept ultimately
never got very far in production as a director was
never attached to the project before it was finally
aborted. Sadly, details on this would be film are
relatively scarce. For example, it's unknown if
the film was simply going to be inspired by the
novels or an attempted retelling of some of the
events. It's also not known if author Asimov was
ever approached with the idea.
Note: No pictures of the premise exist. The
above image is a composite using elements from a
Japanese artist rendering the Galatic Empire series.
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