The Dark Redemption was one of the first mega-fan films to be produced in the late 1990s—a half-hour flick with relatively high production values, and even a “real” Star Wars actor, Peter Sumner, reprising his role as Imperial Officer Lt. Pol Triedum, a minor character from the original 1977 feature film.

While it had much to offer, however, today The Dark Redemption is mainly remembered as the only fan film Lucasfilm ever threatened legal action against, effectively forcing its producers to shut down the distribution of the film or face the legal consequences. What would make a wildly successful production company get so red in the face about a homegrown project made by enthusiastic fans? Find out after the jump.

TDR was made for an Australian fan film contest sponsored by Force III—a convention held to coincide with the release of The Phantom Menace. On its own, the film would have been notable as it centered around how the Death Star plans were stolen and sent to Princess Leia, and it marked the first time the “Extended Universe” character of Mara Jade appeared on a screen. What’s more, her creator, novelist Timothy Zahn was on hand at Force III and actually saw the flick. His thoughts on the first visual interpretation of his character? Well, you’ll have to dig through my fan film book, Homemade Hollywood, when it comes out later this month to find out. But one thing you won’t find out is why The Dark Redemption got a Cease & Desist order from Lucasfilm.

There were plenty of versions of the story that have floated around since then, ranging from “Lucas didn’t want competition against The Phantom Menace” (ridiculous) to “he wanted to reserve the right to invent the ‘How Leia got the plans’ story himself” (quite plausible) to the rumor that Dark Redemption T-shirts with copyrighted Star Wars characters on them were sold to help fund the production. While The Dark Redemption gets in-depth coverage in my book, I never got a straight answer from anyone associated with the film as to what exactly was in that C&D…until now.

Dwight Boniecki, who co-wrote the Dark Redemption script, finally got back to me a few months too late. Rather than have his answer go to waste, here’s the scoop on why the film was shut down:

The Lucasfilm reaction occurred at a time when any fan-made material was actively pursued by the Lucasfilm lawyers. Several websites had been forcibly shut down, and the only salvation of TDR was that it was made for the competition, and was not going to make a profit. In fact, the film’s website was in operation for almost a year prior to the Cease and Desist order. Everything was going without any concern of Lucasfilm until a tape was sent to a fan convention in the USA in 1999. After an enthusiastic audience reaction, TDR became the buzzword among Star Wars fans, and within a week, the lawyers had moved in with a Cease and Desist order. (Interesting sidenote: Bootleg tapes of this screening were made and surfaced for sale by several Ebay dealers. Thanks to a combined effort of fans, Ebay finally shutdown these bogus traders)

Essentially the Cease and Desist wording [stated that Lucasfilm felt] Star Wars trademark characters were being portrayed in a way which were possibly damaging to the franchise. More so, as I recall, the Cease and Desist was aimed at the website more than the film. We had to supply how many hits the website had and any profits we had made from the website (there were none, so we weren’t that worried).

There were a limited run of T-shirts made, but they did not have characters on them. It was the TDR typeface you see on the crawl with a tagline, “The Empire’s days are numbered,” on the back. They were gray-colored with black type. These were more crew t-shirts, although some may have been sold; I can’t recall, though Lucasfilm would have a very hard time pulling the plug on those as they were only text and some lawyers investigated the legalities IIRC.

The fall-out of Lucasfilm’s C&D on the fan film would play out for a few years, although now the company sponsors the annual fan film competition beloved by many fan film fans. Still, it’s fair to wonder how popular TDR could have become had it not been stalled by Lucas’ lawyers. Would it have reached Troops-level icon status? Share your thoughts below in the comments.