There's been quite a few rumors relating to Shawn Levy's Star Wars: Starfighter doing the rounds since Disney announced that cameras were rolling on the project earlier this year, with some claiming that the movie will directly connect to the sequel trilogy by laying some of the groundwork for Lucasfilm's future plans for Rey and the "New Jedi Order."
While Starfighter might well include some ties to the wider Star Wars universe, Levy has now clarified that his film will be a standalone story.
"Well, for one thing, it is different in that it is an all-new non-sequel, non-prequel adventure. It's new characters, it's a new timeline. It inherits legacy themes, but it's really trying to give Star Wars [fans] — and just movie audiences — something fresh, something new. And with a spirit of play and big-hearted adventure with moments of real levity that, frankly, A New Hope had in a revolutionary way," the Deadpool and Wolverine director tells Collider.
"We're really trying to sort of take that tone as a North Star every day. My crew, my DP, Claudio Miranda, Gosling is my kind of central collaborator in the lead role. It's certainly been a dream come true. My 10-year-old self is on set with me every day. In fact, he's going to catch a flight tonight to go back to the set and keep shooting on Monday. But it's a huge invigorating opportunity because Lucasfilm has been so encouraging of me doing something new. There's no pressure to be derivative or limited by an obligation to what came before. There's just a love of what came before."
Though Starfighter may not be a direct sequel to any previous Star Wars film, we do know that the movie will take place several years after the events of The Rise of Skywalker.
"It is surreal and awesome every day walking onto this set, to have made up a new and original Star Wars story that is neither a sequel nor a prequel to anything," Levy says in a separate interview with EW. "I have deep respect and love for this historic legacy, but a chance to do something fresh and original and to do it with Jonathan Tropper, the writer of The Adam Project, and with Gosling. Every day it's hard as hell, but it's dream-come-true territory every day."
Ryan Gosling (Barbie, Drive) is set to star alongside Flynn Gray (Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2), Matt Smith (House of the Dragon), Mia Goth (Infinity Pool), Aaron Pierre (Lanterns), Simon Bird (The Inbetweeners), Jamael Westman (Hedda), Daniel Ings (Lovesick), and Amy Adams (Man of Steel).
Gosling is believed to be playing the uncle of Gray's Force-sensitive teen, who becomes his protector as they are pursued across the galaxy by a pair of ruthless villains (Goth, and possibly Smith). Adams is rumored to be playing the lad's mother.
"I feel a profound sense of excitement and honor as we begin production on Star Wars: Starfighter," Levy said in a press release when production began. "From the day Kathy Kennedy called me up, inviting me to develop an original adventure in this incredible Star Wars galaxy, this experience has been a dream come true, creatively and personally."
He added, "Star Wars shaped my sense of what story can do, how characters and cinematic moments can live with us forever. To join this storytelling galaxy with such brilliant collaborators onscreen and off, is the thrill of a lifetime.
Star Wars: Starfighter is currently scheduled to release in theaters on May 28, 2027.