Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy has said the three newly announced Star Wars films are “pretty far along” in development.
Speaking to IGN at Star Wars Celebration, Kennedy made clear that the new films from Dave Filoni, Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, and James Mangold aren’t just ideas being thrown around at Lucasfilm but have been in development for a considerable amount of time.
“We’re pretty far along,” Kennedy said. “These are things, as you can imagine, certainly looking at what Dave’s been doing with Ahsoka, that’ll be at least six, seven years building to what it is we’re going to be doing in a movie.
“As far as Charmaine, we’ve been working on that for a couple years already. And with what Jim’s doing, Jim and I, because we had the benefit of doing Indiana Jones together, there was a lot of discussion about what that story is.
“What’s great about Jim, is he’s a writer director, much like David is, so he can move that along at a pretty fast pace. So everything’s kind of moving along. We may have a really nice situation where we have all of these things ready to go, and we can take our time figuring out when we make them.”
We already know of at least one casting too, thanks to Daisy Ridley making an appearance at Star Wars Celebration to announce her return to the galaxy far, far away. Ridley will once again play Rey Skywalker, but in a film set 15 years after Rise of Skywalker as the character attempts to rebuild the Jedi Order.
Nothing is official for Filoni’s movie yet, though he and Jon Favreau appeared to tease that it will be a culmination to the stories told in The Mandalorian, Book of Boba Fett, and the upcoming Ahsoka series.
Mangold’s is equally shrouded in mystery, but the writer and director said during Celebration that it would be set at the earliest point in the Star Wars timeline, focusing on the emergence of the Force and the dawn of the Jedi.
Beyond these three, Kennedy also revealed at Celebration that Taika Waititi’s Star Wars project is still happening, with the Thor: Ragnarok director “still working away” on the script. The same can’t be said for Rian Johnson’s trilogy, however, as this is not actively being worked on.
Disney cleaned up its list of upcoming projects a little ahead of Celebration, also shelving Kevin Feige’s and Patty Jenkins’ films. The thought to be completely cancelled Rogue Squadron may have some hope though, as Kennedy said it’s one the team still talks about a lot.
Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer and acting UK news editor. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.
