Writer-producer Simon Kinberg is working on a new Star Wars trilogy, said to be Episodes X-XII, but reports also highlight how far off it’s likely to be.
As we’ve recently explored on these pages, Lucasfilm has spent the past five years announcing Star Wars films and then not making them. With the exception of TV spin-off The Mandalorian And Grogu, due in cinemas in 2026, precisely none of the movies announced by the studio in recent years have gone into production. Big names have been attached – Patty Jenkins, Taika Waititi, Shawn Levy and the like – but little else of substance has emerged.
To the list of names on Lucasfilm’s roster we can now add Simon Kinberg – the multi-hyphenate filmmaker whose addition to the Star Wars franchise was announced on the 7th November. The word is that Kinberg, best known for his work on the X-Men film series, is going to write and produce a new trilogy of Star Wars movies; since then, there have been rumours that he’s been hired make a trio of sequels – namely Episodes X, XI and XII.
Hollywood journo Jeff Sneider (via World Of Reel), for example, suggests that the trilogy Kinberg’s working on will bring back Daisy Ridley’s Rey as “the Obi-Wan of the new trilogy” – in other words, a seasoned mentor to one or perhaps several young Jedi.
If that concept sounds familiar, then it’s because it’s pretty much identical to New Jedi Order, the long-discussed sequel headed up by director Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy and written by Peaky Blinders’ Steven Knight. There have been rumours that the project is on indefinite hold, and that Knight had exited it after receiving a flurry of notes over his script.
As World Of Reel points out, it’s quite possible that Simon Kinberg has been hired to take creative control over New Jedi Order, writing a new story around Daisy Ridley’s character and possibly even directing. Lucasfilm certainly has form when it comes to hiring a filmmaker to make a movie about a specific topic, then handing it over to someone else.
At one stage, Guillermo del Toro and screenwriter David S Goyer were working on a movie set 25,000 years before A New Hope; this was scrapped, as was Game Of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and DB Weiss’ The First Jedi. The latter was officially dead by January 2024. It’s now thought that James Mangold is directing and co-writing Dawn Of The Jedi, another origin story said to be tonally akin to a “biblical epic.”
Read more: Star Wars | Lucasfilm is exceptionally good at not making movies
Logically enough, Lucasfilm evidently wants to continue the Star Wars saga with sequels to 2019’s The Rise Of Skywalker, while also delving back into its history with prequels. What those stories will actually entail appears to be an ongoing sticking point.
A report published by Variety on Saturday 9th November illustrates just how confused things appear to be behind the scenes at Lucasfilm. According to journalist Adam B Vary, executives at Lucasfilm and its owner Disney were “surprised” when word of Kinberg’s hiring had gone public – not least because what he’s working on is in “deep development.” That is, he’s barely started working on it yet.
Kinberg was reportedly hired by Lucasfilm boss Kathleen Kennedy, continuing an on-again, off-again creative partnership that began when she took over the studio in 2012. As well as working on the animated series Star Wars Rebels, Kinberg was also – along with Michael Arndt and Lawrence Kasdan – asked to come up with a plan for the trilogy of Star Wars sequels which began with 2015’s The Force Awakens. Variety notes that the planning work for those films was “largely discarded”; as was a movie about Boba Fett that Kinberg was developing with writer-director James Mangold.
Like so many other filmmakers, Kinberg has therefore already spent some time working on Star Wars ideas that were later scrapped. That Variety report also seems keen to temper expectations when it comes Kinberg’s latest contribution to the franchise; it notes that Kinberg is already busy helping Paramount resurrect the Star Trek series for cinemas, and implies that, if anything, his involvement in Star Wars was announced too soon.
“Studio insiders also stress that […] the films are in their most nascent stage,” it reads. “specific plot details and characters are light years away from taking their final shape, let alone [arriving] in theatres.”
After The Mandalorian And Grogu emerges in May 2026, Lucasfilm has two further, so far untitled Star Wars movies scheduled for release in December 2026 and December 2027. Whatever those are, they definitely won’t be part of Simon Kinberg’s trilogy, which isn’t likely to emerge until sometime afterwards – assuming it avoids the gloomy fate of so many other Star Wars projects, and actually goes into production.
