Two new Star Wars films have been announced, with more details of a third to follow announced as series creator Lucasfilm appears to be closing in on the hiatus since the 2019 release of Star Wars: Episode IX – The Rise of Celestial.
Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy made the announcement at the Star Wars Celebration event at the ExCeL Center in London.
The two new films will be overseen by James Mangold, director of Logan, and Dave Filoni, co-creator of the Mandalorian TV series and director of the 2008 computer-animated film Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Kennedy said Mangold’s film “will tell the story of the first Jedi wielding and harnessing the Force as a liberating force in an age of chaos and oppression”, while Filoni’s film will be about “the escalating war between residual imperialism and the emerging New Republic” and will close the interconnected stories told in The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett, Ahsoka, and other Disney+ series”.
The third film to be announced, a project directed by Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, has been known for some time, but appears to have been plagued by changes of direction and departures of staff. Obaid-Chinoy, set 15 years after The Rise of Skywalker, features Daisy Ridley as Rey; It will “tell the story of the rebuilding of the New Jedi Order and the forces that rose to destroy it.” Lucasfilm recently announced Peaky Blinders’ Stephen Knight has replaced Damon Lindelof and Justin Brett Gibson as writers in this movie.
The development of the Star Wars films has had a checkered recent history, with separate projects overseen by Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige and Wonder Woman director Patty Jenkins, and one from Thor: Love and Hunger, Taika Waititi and Krysty 1917 co-writer Wilson Cairns still in development.
At the same event, Lucasfilm confirmed a host of new TV shows, including a second series of Andor and The Mandalorian spin-off Ahsoka.
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