If you tuned into Star Wars Celebration last week hoping to learn a lot about the future slate of movies from Lucasfilm set in the galaxy far, far away, you probably left feeling rather let down. During the four-day conference in Anaheim, we didn’t really discover anything new about the three movies that are now in production. The Mandalorian season 3, Andor, Ahsoka, The Bad Batch, and the brand-new animated series Tales of the Jedi took centre stage, making the Disney+ series the true stars of the show. Even a new Star Wars video game was revealed over the weekend, but not a single item about the original franchise-starting medium.
How come? It’s no secret, though, that there is some uncertainty over the possibility of a new Star Wars movie. The movie Taika Waititi and Krysty Wilson-Cairns are working on will now be the next Star Wars movie we see on the big screen after Patty Jenkins’ Rogue Squadron movie’s initial Dec. 2023 release date was postponed (reportedly owing to creative issues with the script). However, no firm date for this project’s release has been established. According to Kathleen Kennedy, president of Lucasfilm, the company was aiming for “late 2023,” but “hadn’t locked anything in.”
Then there is the unreleased, unofficial Star Wars film that Kevin Feige, the head of Marvel, and Michael Waldron, the man who created Loki, are working on. The movie, which “is not necessarily a sequel,” and “doesn’t have a bunch of TV series and movies that you’re servicing on top of it,” according to a recent announcement by Waldron, would be a stand-alone adventure. But this project is still in its early stages, so don’t hold out hope for a quick release.
Therefore, it seems logical that Lucasfilm skipped this year’s Celebration without bringing any movie announcements, previews, or casting news. Kennedy did, however, share a crucial piece of information on these upcoming Star Wars films during Celebration, just not during any of the panels.
Kennedy provided a chronology for the next Star Wars films in an interview with Empire published over the weekend. Spoiler alert: The Sequel Trilogy may be referenced in Waititi, Jenkins, and Feige’s films.
As we look at our movie space, we’re moving further than the current sequels, she said to Empire. We frequently discuss the sequel era when discussing the direction our films are taking and how far we’ll stray from it. That’s the area on which we’re really focusing.
In support of this, Kennedy told Total Film that there was “no hesitancy” in moving past the Skywalker Saga: “We need to develop a completely new saga. That demands a lot. There is a lot of discussion surrounding that.
Kennedy seems to be implying that this is the plan for all of the films currently in development when he says that Rogue Squadron will “move the saga into the future era of the galaxy,” which hinted that Lucasfilm was prepared to tell stories set after The Rise of Skywalker even back in the original announcement for the film. Naturally, there is precedent for Star Wars to venture into historical periods unrelated to its original Skywalker Saga characters. After the Original Trilogy, the now-canonical Legends continuity spanned more than a century and introduced all-new characters, Sith villains, and intergalactic wars in addition to the offspring of Luke and Leia.
Will Disney, though, take such a significant chance with its own Star Wars canon? Could making a movie so far from any recognisable characters alienate moviegoers who only want to see more of the familiar heroes and villains? The High Republic, a series of books and comics set 200 years before The Phantom Menace when the Skywalkers and Palpatines of the galaxy weren’t even yet around, is now Lucasfilm’s test project (as far as we know). The real test will be The Acolyte, an upcoming Disney+ series set in the High Republic era but only 100 years before the films, meaning the studio will probably still be able to include a few cameos in there. Several High Republic novels have topped best-seller lists, suggesting there is an appetite for Star Wars to break away from the familiar. For instance, a 700-year-old Master Yoda has already been depicted in The High Republic comics.
It’s more likely that these post-Sequel movies would be set just far enough away from the drama of the Resistance and First Order to move past the baggage of that trilogy, but still close enough that the door would be open to fan-favorite characters, if the current era of cameo-heavy Disney+ shows is any indication. Would Lucasfilm actually produce a post-Episode IX Rogue Squadron movie without including Poe Dameron, played by Oscar Isaac, in some capacity? Hard to believe, it seems.
