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Next week, Empire Magazine are set to release their next issue which focuses primarily on Marvel Studios’ upcoming series, Secret Invasion, led by Samuel L. Jackson, but the magazine also promises a Star Wars blowout with interviews with various creatives such as Kathleen Kennedy, Dave Filoni and Jon Favreau, along with stars including Rosario Dawson (Ahsoka), Amandla Stenberg (The Acolyte), Diego Luna (Andor), Jude Law (Skeleton Crew) and more. Empire has started releasing excerpts from the upcoming issue, with their latest one focusing on Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy, who’s revealed that she wants to “eventise” Star Wars going forward.
Lucasfilm haven’t released a Star Wars movie since 2019’s Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, which didn’t please critics, and received a mix response from fans. Skywalker capped Disney’s initial Star Wars theatrical run, which saw Lucasfilm and Disney release a Star Wars movie every year from 2015 until 2019. During that period, it was announced that Rian Johnson, director of Star Wars: The Last Jedi, had been given a trilogy, Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige would produce a standalone movie, and that Game of Thrones show runners, David Benioff and D.B. Weiss were set to write a series of movies. Less than a year after the release of The Rise of Skywalker, Benioff and Weiss departed their project after working on it for over a year to sign a lucrative deal with Netflix, the Rian Johnson trilogy supposedly hasn’t happened due to Johnson’s hectic schedule, and Feige’s film is seemingly no longer happening.
Lucasfilm continued to develop various film projects following the departure of Benioff and Weiss, who were set to oversee the next series of Star Wars movies as we entered the 2020’s. In May of 2020, Lucasfilm announced they had signed Thor: Love and Thunder director, Taika Waititi, for an untitled Star Wars flick and in December of the same year, Patty Jenkins, the director of Wonder Woman, was announced to be directing Star Wars: Rogue Squadron, a film inspired by her father, with Lucasfilm setting a release date of December 2023. However, less than a year after Jenkins’ announcement, her film was indefinitely delayed as she began work on a third Wonder Woman movie, which was later cancelled. The Waititi project was rumoured to release on December 19th, 2025, a release date Lucasfilm had been holding for a while, but Kennedy claimed the project would release in late 2023, the release window of Rogue Squadron, but Waititi denied the claim and a release date for his flick has yet to be dated.
With writers and directors departing, Lucasfilm found a new hope (see what I did there?) in Lost scribe Damon Lindelof, who began working on a project with the studio set years after the events of the Star Wars sequel trilogy. In the months that followed, Lindelof and Lucasfilm constructed a writers room for the film, and found the director of the project in Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy (Ms. Marvel). It was believed that the film would take the December 2025 release date, as momentum swelled behind the project. However, Lindelof departed the project in February of this year as he was asked to leave by the studio, with Lucasfilm hiring Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight to write the film. The flick was formally announced at Star Wars Celebration last month and is set fifteen years after the events of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, and will follow Daisy Ridley’s Rey Skywalker as she forms a New Jedi Order. Lucasfilm also announced two additional flicks, a MandoVerse crossover film directed by Dave Filoni, and a film that would focus of the first ever Jedi from Logan director, James Mangold.
Despite Lucasfilm clearly eager to get a film off the ground since the release of The Rise of Skywalker, Lucasfilm president, Kathleen Kennedy tells Empire Magazine that she’s been looking at the iconic James Bond film franchise as inspiration to “eventise” Star Wars film releases, opting to release a Star Wars film every three to four years, a departure from the one a year they’d been doing from 2015 until 2019. Kennedy said;
“I’ve often brought up Bond, 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 eventise this. 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.”
Many fans have been calling for Star Wars movies to return to releasing every three years, a pattern set out by the Star Wars godfather, George Lucas, who released a new entry into each trilogy every three years. Those fans want every Star Wars movie to feel like an event, and that having to wait a few years makes each release feel special. On the flip side there’s fans that want a movie every single year, despite Lucasfilm releasing multiple television series year. Despite Kennedy’s comments of looking to Bond to “eventise” and releasing a movie every three to four years, it’s been reported that Lucasfilm are hoping to release a Star Wars film in December 2025, believed to be the Daisy Ridley led New Jedi Order flick, and in December 2026, which will reportedly be the film being directed by Dave Filoni, which will act as a crossover film for various series he has produced including The Mandalorian and Ahsoka.
The latest issue of Empire will release on May 11th.
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