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 Blu-ray cover, featuringStewie asDarth Vader | |
| Directed by | |
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| Based on | Star Wars byGeorge Lucas |
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| Edited by | Lucasfilm |
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| Distributed by | 20th Century Fox Television |
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Running time | 159 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
Laugh It Up, Fuzzball: The Family Guy Trilogy consists of three episodes of the Americananimated sitcomFamily Guy. The episodes are acrossover andparody retelling of theStar Wars original trilogy, consisting of the filmsStar Wars[a] (1977),The Empire Strikes Back (1980), andReturn of the Jedi (1983). The first episode, "Blue Harvest" (2007), was released to commemorate the original film's 30th anniversary. Due to its success, it was followed by twodirect-to-video sequels: "Something, Something, Something, Dark Side" (2009) and "It's a Trap!" (2010), which were subsequently aired on television in edited versions, omitting mostprofanity and sexual references. The trilogy was released onBlu-ray andDVD in theUnited States on December 21, 2010. Its title comes from a phraseHan Solo said toChewbacca inThe Empire Strikes Back as the latter was laughing at the former.
Duringpower outages,Peter Griffin tells his family the stories of the originalStar Wars trilogy films, with characters fromFamily Guy,The Cleveland Show, andAmerican Dad! playing theStar Wars roles.
At the 2007Comic Con, a series of clips were shown at a panel forFamily Guy from the season premiere episode, showing theFamily Guy characters asStar Wars characters. The episode aired on September 23, 2007, with some slight changes from the clips shown at Comic Con. Parts of this episode were shown atStar Wars Celebration IV, at whichFamily Guy creatorSeth MacFarlane, aStar Wars fan since childhood, was a special guest,[1] and again atSan Diego Comic-Con in 2007.[2] The episode was officially endorsed byLucasfilm, especiallyGeorge Lucas, who revealed in his conversation with MacFarlane that he hasTiVoed every episode ofFamily Guy without having to buy theDVDs and, in addition toJackass, it is the only show he watches. MacFarlane said they were extremely helpful when theFamily Guy crew wanted to parody their works.[3]
The episode was written by series regularKirker Butler, before the2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike, and before his leave from the series in order to become co-executive producer of theFamily Guy spinoff seriesThe Cleveland Show. Butler wrote the first draft of the episode in four weeks, under the guidance of series creatorSeth MacFarlane. The episode was directed byDominic Polcino, who had previously directed "Blue Harvest". This was the last episode in the series to use hand-drawnanimatics, before transitioning to computer-designed animatics.
It was announced in March 2009 that the cast of the show had read through an early draft of the script under the working title, "Episode VI: The Great Muppet Caper".[4] The second working title, "We Have a Bad Feeling About This," was a reference to the recurring catchphrase used in theStar Wars films. The settled-upon title is a reference to the line byAdmiral Ackbar in the film.
When asked about the possibility of aFamily Guy retelling of the otherStar Wars trilogies,Alec Sulkin stated that a spoof of theStar Wars prequel andsequel trilogies were unlikely to happen due to the difficulty and struggle of spoofingThe Empire Strikes Back and the 2012Disney acquisition ofLucasfilm being the primary reasons.[5] Sulkin stated, "We like the first three but by the time we were done with the third one I think we were about ready to kill ourselves. The new regime at Star Wars / Disney is a little more difficult to deal with. Before we were just dealing with Lucasfilm and Seth had a good relationship with them... I just think that [Disney's] a little more rigid".[6] Series creatorSeth MacFarlane also commented on the situation viaTwitter stating "Disney keeps a tighter hold on it, so it's unlikely", though this could change following thebuyout of 21st Century Fox's entertainment assets by Disney.[7]
A spoof of theIndiana Jones series was also considered for development, but has not received any updates concerning its production.[8]
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