After a fallow few years in the cinematic space and an uptick in attention to its various TV series, “Star Wars” is finally getting back into the movie business.
At last month’s Star Wars Celebration, Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy told a rapt crowd that a trio of new features are currently in the works. Those films include new joints from James Mangold (who recently worked with the Lucasfilm crew on this year’s “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” out this summer), long-time “Star Wars” TV guru Dave Filoni, and Oscar-winning filmmaker Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy’s previously announced feature, which we now know will center on the return of Daisy Ridley’s Rey.
But just when can fans expect to see these films? As Kennedy told Empire during an interview at this year’s London event, not until 2025 at the earliest. “It’s much better to tell the truth: that we’re going to make these movies when they’re ready to be made and release them when they’re ready to be released,” she told the outlet.
Yet Kennedy and company are already thinking about how the films will be released when the time comes, which will likely include a break between films and a bent toward “eventizing” them for movie-goers. “I’ve often brought up [James] Bond,” she told the outlet. “That’s every three or four years and there wasn’t this pressure to feel like you had to have a movie every year. I feel that was very important to ‘Star Wars.’ We have to eventize this.”
Taking a break between films certainly sounds like a good idea, especially after the whiz-bang four-year adventure that was the release pattern for the recent sequel trilogy, but it seems as good a time as any to remind Kennedy that if there’s one thing “Star Wars” films are able to do, it’s be an event, even if that magic has been lacking with recent entries.
Kennedy also offered up a few new details on what is likely to be the first film out of the gate, Obaid-Chinoy’s feature, which picks up 15 years after the events of “The Rise of Skywalker.” “What we’re exploring is the evolution of the Jedi,” Kennedy said. “We’re going very far back, we’re looking at the present. […] The First Order has fallen, the Jedi are in chaos — there’s even a question of how many exist anymore — and Rey’s building the New Jedi Order, based on the text that she was given and that Luke imparted on her.”
