Troubled studio Lucasfilm has declined to set dates for its upcoming planned trio of Star Wars films – and who can blame it?
According to a lengthy report in The Hollywood Reporter, Lucasfilm elected not to put dates on its upcoming Star Wars movies to avoid more embarrassment, following a sting of announced (and dated) productions that have gone awry.
As it stands, the studio still has a release date for December 2025 that it is hoping to make, with the recently-announced film featuring Daisy Ridley’s Rey returning to the Star Wars fold. However, given the troubles that project has faced including the high-profile departure of writer Damon Lindelof, the studio clearly doesn’t feel confident enough to commit to a release date yet.
According to the report, the tentative plan is to get Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy’s New Jedi Order film underway quickly, featuring the returning character of Rey and set some 15 years after 2019’s critically-maligned The Rise of Skywalker. That notion is beset with challenges though, given that Lucasfilm doesn’t yet have a script, with Peaky Blinders’ Steven Knight currently working on what we can only imagine is a less risky take on the material than Lindelof’s draft.
Averting risk seems to be the Lucasfilm policy ever since the studio lost its nerve and fired Phil Lord and Chris Miller in 2017 midway through the production of Solo: A Star Wars Story. Since then, a long list of projects have been axed, with Lucasfilm seeming afraid to take any creative risks that could hurt the health of the series.
As such, the appointment of Dave Filoni as the director of an untitled Star Wars film seems to be a choice that Lucasfilm believes will please everybody. The popular Star Wars creative will be helming a film that supposedly ties together The Mandalorian, Ahsoka and perhaps The Book Of Boba Felt TV shows.
But the report suggests that landing on a date for this one is even trickier for Lucasfilm because it is so narratively dependent on future TV seasons that have not been greenlit yet, and dependent on the performance of shows which are yet to release.
Finally, the report suggests that the announced James Mangold film set 25,000 years before the main Star Wars timeline is the film furthest from production, given that he has a Bob Dylan biopic to shoot for Paramount this year. All in all, the piece does a pretty good job of summarising the sticky spot Lucasfilm finds itself in, and fan feelings regarding the studio’s many missteps.
As for Lucasfilm, the pressure really is on now to deliver, with plenty of eyes keeping tabs on the company’s production slate as the clock ticks down to December 2025 and that release date that the studio won’t want to miss. We’ll bring you more as we hear it.
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