By the end of the year, the lineup had swelled to include toys, trading cards, a Nintendo 64 video game, and even a trailer - aired exclusively on QVC. First came Perry's Shadows of the Empire novel, Dark Horse Comics' Shadows of the Empire series, and the Shadows of the Empire concept album. When the epic event - dubbed Shadows of the Empire and set between The Empire Strikes Back and The Return of the Jedi - launched in the spring of 1996, the closely tied-together pieces that made up the series could be found virtually everywhere except local cineplexes. 'The Lucasfilm experience was all-encompassing,' Perry told me over email this month, and he's not exaggerating. without actually making a new Star Wars movie. Out of those brainstorming sessions - attended by Bantam author Steve Perry and representatives from LucasArts, among others - emerged a 25-page outline for a multimedia event designed to achieve the scale of a new Star Wars movie. On the agenda: how to invigorate a lucrative movie franchise that hadn't released a movie for more than a decade. In late 1994, LucasFilm held a series of top-secret meetings with Star Wars licensees.

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