Sorry to those who were hoping to get thatBoba Fettmovie someday, but Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy has, more or less, made it clear that won’t be happening. When Disney purchased Lucasfilm in 2012, it was obvious that we were going to get newStar Warsmovies, though it wasn’t clear just how many, nor was it totally clear how that would be handled. The studio has experimented a bit and that experimenting has led them to a place where they’ve decided it’s best not to do any more movies likeSolo.
This comes as part of a massive preview story forStar Wars: The Rise of Skywalkerthat made its way online. This will serve as the conclusion to the sequel trilogy that started withThe Force Awakensin 2015. In the years since, Disney has also released one-off movies such asRogue OneandSolo, with the former doing quite a bit better than the latter at the box office. As such,Kathleen Kennedyhas strongly hinted that similar character movies are out of the question in the future. Here’s what she had to say about it.
“I think there is a larger expectation that Disney has. On the other hand, though, I think thatDisneyis very respectful of what this is, and right from the beginning we talked about the fragility of this form of storytelling. Because it’s something that means so much to fans that you can’t turn this into some kind of factory approach. You can’t even do what Marvel does, necessarily, where you pick characters and build new franchises around those characters. This needs to evolve differently.”
Solo: A Star Wars Storyproved to be something of a disaster by Star Wars standards. Directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller were fired after having shot most of the movie. Ron Howard was brought in to essentially refilm most of the movie, which effectively almost doubled the production budget. While critics didn’t hate the final product, the response, generally speaking, was somewhat lukewarm and the movie grossed just $392 million worldwide. Since the budget was so massive, it actually lost money for the studio.
Point being, it’s understandable that Lucasfilm would look to shy away from these types of stories in the future. That’s not to say that we won’t get more movies. They’ve already set dates for the next three entries in a galaxy far, far away, with the first coming our way in 2022. That will be the first in a new trilogy fromGame of Thronescreators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss.
But there is hope for different types of storytelling. The Disney+ streaming service is already going to play home toThe Mandalorian, the first live-action Star Wars series ever, as well as aRogue Oneprequel series centered on Cassian Andor. So perhaps TV will be where those types of stories that once might have been considered as one-off movies will exist in the future.Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalkeris set to hit theaters on December 20. This news was first reported byVanity Fair.
