At London's Star Wars Celebration in 2023, Lucasfilm announced three new Star Wars movies. One promised to explore the origin of the first Jedi, another looked set to assembled characters from the "Mandoverse," and then there was Daisy Ridley's return as Rey Skywalker.
They've yet to materialise, though The Mandalorian and Grogu is on the way and the rest remain in various stages of pre-production. However, Lucasfilm Kathleen Kennedy has pointed to the future of the franchise being primarily post-The Rise of Skywalker.
Talking to Deadline (via SFFGazette.com), the veteran producer said Dark Phoenix director Simon Kinberg's planned trilogy is "rolling fast and furiously" and "has gone exceptionally well."
She added, "He’s literally going to script as we speak. We’ll see something probably around June. We’re really excited about where that’s headed. This is the next iteration, the new saga that moves us into the future."
Kennedy also confirmed that Deadpool & Wolverine director Shawn Levy's Star Wars movie starring Ryan Gosling is "also in the future" and said, "It's all post-[Episode] nine."
"Shawn’s is a standalone Star Wars story that’ll take place post-nine, maybe five or six years out," she teased. "And Mandalorian really stands on its own because there, we’re dealing with a whole other era in the New Republic. We have other development going on in that space as well."
"So that’s the space that we’re pretty much focused on right at the moment, because obviously with Mandalorian we have a pretty good sense of where that’s going. And with this, it’s all pretty much new characters. We may bring some of the characters back from the sequel saga, but pretty much new characters," Kennedy noted.
She later reiterated that James Mangold is still working on his "First Jedi" script, pointing to the delay being a result of A Complete Unknown's awards campaign. Based on past reports, we anticipate him making a Star Wars movie before DC Studios' Swamp Thing.
Kennedy also shared, "I keep waiting for Taika [Waititi], and he is working with another writer now. He’s so busy. I love him. I think if we ever do get a script from Taika, it’s going to be fantastic. I already saw a first act that I loved, but tying him down, it’s tricky."
So, all signs point to the majority of movies focusing on what became of the Galaxy after The Rise of Skywalker. That's fresh ground to explore and will likely explore the return of the Jedi Order. How interested fans will be in these new characters will hinge on the strength of the scripts Kennedy is hyping up. Perhaps an old Grogu should just lead them all?
On a more serious note, Rey will almost certainly be the character these stories revolve around. Time will tell, but these updates raise a lot of big questions about what the Star Wars franchise will look like moving forward.