Though a bunch of new “Star Wars” film projects were announced at Star Wars Celebration in London last weekend, all three are quite different to each other – two are set on complete opposite ends of a timeline some 25,000 or so years apart, whilst another is an event bringing together several TV series.
All three are being handled by different directors, each with their own story and tone in mind, and beyond sharing the same universe there doesn’t appear to be much of a link between any of them.
That’s deliberate according to Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy. Giving interviews in the wake of popping up on panels, she says the studio isn’t about rushing out projects to meet release dates or hitting a yearly quota of titles released.
She tells Collider that story always comes first and the company is focused on: “only the ones that are really good” as opposed to meeting a pre-defined schedule:
“We don’t really think about it that way. I’m not kidding when I say that we talk about things in terms of story and the people involved and arriving in a place where we think it’s gonna be great and that we should move forward. So even though we have a certain mandate around a slate where we’re being asked to maybe do you know, one or two a year, we wouldn’t do that if we didn’t feel we were ready.”
She also seems to want to avoid a problem that comes with any mega-franchise – an over-dependence on its interconnected nature. Whereas that can be a strength that can draw people in to some weaker entries in the early days, the sheer glut of ‘required viewing’ required after a while can impact more casual viewers or those who don’t have the time to keep up.
Kennedy tells the outlet there are no plans to expand any of the new films into potential franchises but the studio will consider all of their options before announcing more projects:
“We really are looking at these as ways in which people can enter Star Wars from different places and not feel the burden of, ‘Oh God, I gotta catch up with everything that’s been made before.’ So we don’t really talk about it in terms of trilogies per se.
We talk about it as stories, obviously, what Rey is doing is a carryover of what George [Lucas] created, and what we carried on with and what we’re doing with the other movies will be separate stories, but they will have a connection. The connection is really the overarching story of the Jedi. That’s what we’re looking at.”
She further elaborates on this in an interview with IGN Nordic, saying that by making the shows and films less co-dependent it can allow various works to serve as entry points for new audiences:
What we’re seeing, and Dave talked a lot about this, we’re seeing the opportunity for fans to find where their entry point is in Star Wars. There’s a lot of things now going back almost 50 years. So you don’t want people to feel like they have to see everything in order to step into Star Wars. And we also want to look at the generational aspect of Star Wars, it’s always been something that’s been passed down.
So something like Skeleton Crew we’re really excited about because it’s aimed at younger kids, but will still bring in the fans, still bring in adults. But that’s an opportunity for a kid that so many of us relate to that, a kid that can step into Star Wars and make it their own. And I think that’s the beauty of the storytelling that’s going on now, is that everybody can kind of find where their entry point is.”
Will they pull in a new generation of fans? We’ll see. The first of the new films, likely the post-Rise of Skywalker film involving Daisy Ridley’s Rey, hits cinemas December 2025.
