Star Wars: Battlefront III (Cancelled Video Game)

Star Wars: Battlefront III was the expected third installment to the Star Wars: Battlefront series. It had gone through multiple stages of "development hell" before being cancelled altogether.

Development
In 2006 a third Battlefront game was originally thought to be in development by developer Free Radical whom neither confirmed nor denied it at the time. They originally stated that they were developing a new Star Wars game for LucasArts, and speculation continued that it would come out on 7th generation platforms Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. That same year, Free Radical Design announced that they lost the rights to develop Star Wars: Battlefront III and that the game at that point had been in development for two years.

Several years later, Free Radical Design co-founder Steve Ellis said Battlefront III was "pretty much done" in 2008, but that it was effectively canned when LucasArts could not commit to "spend big" on marketing it.

The game went into limbo temporarily, before LucasArts' creative lead/creative director Adam Orth teamed with developer Slant Six, together creating a new vision for a Battlefront sequel. The idea at the time was to make Battlefront III downloadable-only, however, there was no enthusiasm for the project. Slant Six's project ended up meeting the same fate as Free Radical's.

In 2011, Spark Unlimited was developing an "unannounced" game, and, if asked if it was BF3 or not, responded along the lines of: "We cannot comment at this time. Please wait for announcement by LucasArts." The game that Spark Unlimited has been developing was revealed to be Lost Planet 3.

The game was ultimately cancelled when Disney acquired LucasArts through its parent company Lucasfilm. After being acquired, Disney ceased all internal development at LucasArts and laid off most of its staff.

There is currently a new Star Wars Battlefront game that's being developed by EA Digital Illusions CE and is slated for a late 2015 release.

Leaked Footage
During and after the game's development, screenshots and gameplay footage became accessible to the public. In December 2008, Star Wars character renders bearing a Battlefront III watermark surfaced on IGN from a laid-off Free Radical employee. The following month, gameplay footage was leaked from a November 2008 Free Radical in-house showing of Battlefront III footage The footage was pulled from IGN after LucasArts demanded its removal. in April 2012, Pas-alpha footage of Free Radical Design's Battlefront III.