Musical comedian Weird Al Yankovic recently revealed that he recorded music for an episode of Star Wars Detours, a show which Disney has yet to release since acquiring Lucasfilm. Yankovic has been producing music since the late 70s and came to fame making musical parodies of popular songs, often with the help of his signature accordion. He's been influential to many a comedy nerd's upbringing and has appeared in a number of live-action and animated projects, co-hosted Comedy Bang Bang, and lent his vocal talents to everything from Batman: The Brave and the Bold to BoJack Horseman. He's been prominent enough to warrant the movie treatment, with a fittingly oddball biopic starring Daniel Radcliffe as the musician now in post-production.

Detours was a CGI animated parody series from Robot Chicken creators Seth Green and Matthew Senreich set in the time between the prequel trilogy and the original trilogy. Almost 40 six-minute episodes of the series were completely finished, with an additional sixty-two written and ready to be made. The show featured fan-favorite characters C-3PO and Lando Calrissian (voiced by original actors Anthony Daniels and Billy Dee Williams) among others, alongside new characters voiced by Joel McHale, Felicia Day, Donald Faison, and Zachary Levi. Although the series was made with the close supervision and input of Lucas himself, and a trailer was released at Star Wars Celebration VI, it was shelved indefinitely after the Disney acquisition in 2012. Green has said serious edits would need to be done to Detours to make it relevant today, which is why it remains in the vault.

On The George Lucas Talk Show (via Comicbook), Yankovic confirmed he had written and recorded songs for a musical episode of the show to appear sometime in its 3rd season. When asked if they were parody songs, the musician said, "It's been a while, but I'm pretty sure they were all original compositions." It was shortly after finishing the songs that Yankovic learned of the show's fate: Detours was getting derailed. Yankovic's full quote on the matter is below:

"We were working on a Star Wars musical, that was a third-season show, we were writing songs, and all of a sudden, it was like, 'This is not gonna happen... I don't know that I'm allowed [to talk about it]. There were, gosh, at least a half a dozen or more songs as part of the musical and the various characters in the show. We actually recorded them singing their songs, and that was about a week before we found out that the show was not happening."

Star Wars Detours

In addition to his musical contributions to the episode, Yankovic voiced a recurring character on the show. He and Conan sidekick Andy Richter played a pair of bounty hunting aliens named 4-LOM and Zuckuss. That episode of Detours leaked onto Reddit and remains the only bit of show seen by the public eye besides the trailer, but Disney has since scrubbed any trace of it off the internet. Yankovic seems a bit disappointed the show never made it to air.

In all likelihood, it was nixed because Disney was in the midst of creating the final Star Wars trilogy, and they didn't want goofy versions of Princess Leia and Han Solo butting up against their more serious-minded vision of the characters. Disney doesn't have the best track record of letting farcical elements into the series as Lego Movie and 21 Jump Street writer/directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller were ousted from Solo for creating a version of the character that was too irreverent for the company's tastes. It's unfortunate there wasn't more trust in the material though, as Star Trek has essentially created their own version of Detours with Star Trek: Lower Decks, which is about to air its fourth season, showing that the premise can work. Sadly the musical episode of Star Wars Detours with have to exist solely in the memories of Weird Al, and in the imaginations of everyone else.

Source: The George Lucas Talk Show (via ComicBook)