The next eighteen months are shaping up to be an eventful and more fruitful period for Star Wars fans when it comes to live-action releases as they get the first new Star Wars feature film after a whopping seven years hitting the big screen in just three months, The Mandalorian and Grogu, written and directed by Jon Favreau. There’s fortunately no multi-year drought to come after The Mandalorian and Grogu release as the Ryan Gosling led Star Wars: Starfighter, directed by Shawn Levy, will debut just one year later in May 2027.
Sandwiched in-between those two feature films will also see the arrival of the second season of the live-action Disney+ series, Ahsoka, created and show-run by the new co-president of Lucasfilm, Dave Filoni. Ahsoka season two being our first live-action Star Wars series since the second and final season of Andor last Spring.
What’s Next For Star Wars TV?
Beyond Ahsoka season two, it’s not known what other live-action Star Wars series are due to be released. We know that live-action series releases for Star Wars, as well as Marvel, have been cut back by Bob Iger, limiting both to maybe one per-year going forward, possibly two in the case of Marvel Studios. So what’s next?
Well, frankly, we don’t quite know. That’s not to say there’s no live-action Star Wars series in development, there most certainly are. Last year there were reports of Carlton and Nick Cuse working on a mysterious Star Wars series for Lucasfilm, something the Internet has seemed to have forgotten.
The father-son duo have worked on some high profile series in the past with Carlton previously show-running the cultural juggernaut series Lost and more recently, Amazon Prime Video’s hit series, Jack Ryan. His son, Nick, has worked on several noteworthy series himself including HBO’s Watchmen and The Leftovers, along with Emma Stone led Netflix series, Maniac.
Before the announcement of The Mandalorian and Grogu feature film, The Mandalorian season four was very much in-development – Jon Favreau had written the scripts, and was gearing up to enter production, but Disney opted to continue the story of Din Djarin and Din Grogu on the big screen, halting plans for a fourth season.
Tackling Rumours
I bring up a fourth season of The Mandalorian solely because of a listing in Production Weekly. Production Weekly can be a useful tool, but often, a listing appears based on quotes from creators or internet rumours. I think the former might have sparked the reason for the listing as Jon Favreau recently made comments about having the previously completed season four scripts sitting on desk. It’s something worth keeping an eye on and if there are plans for a fourth season, I’m sure it’ll be brought up during the press tour phase of The Mandalorian and Grogu release.
Another listing in the latest Production Weekly is a second season of Skeleton Crew. It’s a surprise to see Skeleton Crew listed as Lucasfilm previously listed and marketed the series as a mini-series. It would be a shock to see Skeleton Crew getting picked up for a second season given that the series seemingly did not perform well, especially for Star Wars.
Skeleton Crew failed to enter the Nielsen Top 10 throughout its run, the first for a live-action Star Wars TV series. During the time, the tenth position on the Nielsen chart was listed with viewership of series between 300-400 million minutes watched, meaning Skeleton Crew during its run was getting less than that benchmark.
Luminate reported that the series was averaging around 180 million minutes watched per week across Skeleton Crew’s first five episodes. Series from Paramount+ and Apple TV were making it into streaming charts at the time despite both streaming services having significantly less subscribers than Disney+ and not having a series on the chart as successful or recognisable as Star Wars.
Looking Ahead
If a new Star Wars series or even a follow-up season to a previous series were due to release sometime in 2027, chances are that we’ll hear about it this year, whether it be from Lucasfilm and Disney themselves or from reputable outlets such as the Hollywood trades. Hopefully fans get an update as to what’s to come in the near future sooner rather than later, but things are looking up on the live-action front.
Whilst writing this article, a change was made to Production Weekly. Both Mando Season 4 and Skeleton Crew Season 2 were pulled from this week’s edition. They no longer appear on the webpage. This furthers our theory as to why these two season were added even though they are not in active production. It will disappoint some to read this but our goal is always to provide a valuable source of news in a galaxy full of outlets that misreport or misinterpret items such as this Production Weekly listing.
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