Photo: Lucasfilm Ltd./Jonathan Olley / © Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures/Disney+/Courtesy Everett Collection
There hasn’t been a Star Wars movie since The Rise of Skywalker in 2019, but that might finally be changing as Lucasfilm just announced that The Mandalorian & Grogu, a blockbuster continuation of the Disney+ series, will go into production this year. And yet, if you’ve got a bad feeling about this movie actually coming out, it’s understandable. There are many would-be Star Wars movies that were announced a long time ago that still seem far, far away …
Chances are The Mandalorian & Grogu, along with a handful of other movies that Disney and Lucasfilm have in the current pipeline, actually will be made and open in theaters. Many more movies, however, were announced but canceled or quietly forgotten about, cut down in their prime like a Youngling in the Jedi Temple. Lucasfilm’s track record has been better on Disney+, which has aired plenty of Star Wars TV shows, albeit with a few false starts. (The Mandalorian spin-off Rangers of the New Republic was canceled when Gina Carano got canceled, for instance, and there’s perennial talk of a Lando series.) For the most part, it’s movies that have been the issue.
Here are all the Star Wars movies that have been announced since Disney took over the franchise and released the sequel trilogy along with Rogue One and Solo. They are listed in rough chronological order from when they were first announced. Not all of them are going to come out. Lucasfilm seems pretty confident that Baby Yoda will make his big-screen debut soon, but its also been pretty confident about a lot of movies that are deader than Aunt Beru and Uncle Owen.
First Reported: February 6, 2013
There was talk of a stand-alone spin-off about the original armor-clad bounty hunter from the beginnings of the Disney era back in 2013, with X-Men’s Simon Kinberg writing the script. Josh Trank was supposed to direct at one point, but he left the following year. In 2018, there was renewed talk of a Boba Fett movie with James Mangold at the helm, though Lucasfilm’s Kathleen Kennedy has denied it was on the table. In any case, they ended up making a Boba Fett TV show instead, and they probably shouldn’t have.
Status: Probably not happening.
Announced: November 9, 2017
Shortly before The Last Jedi premiered, Lucasfilm announced that Rian Johnson would be developing a new trilogy of Star Wars films and writing and directing the first one. Johnson, who wrote and directed the polarizing Last Jedi, was said to be working on a series of films that were “separate from the episodic Skywalker saga” and that would “introduce new characters from a corner of the galaxy that Star Wars lore has never before explored.”
Johnson’s new trilogy was presumed to have been shelved along with a few other canceled Star Wars projects (more on them in a second) in 2021, but Johnson and Kennedy have each said since that the project isn’t dead. It just isn’t happening any time soon and there’s no rush. Speaking to Empire in 2022, Johnson said “It would break my heart if I were finished, if I couldn’t get back in that sandbox at some point.” At the 2023 Star Wars Celebration, Kennedy echoes those words, saying the pair “talk all the time,” but the main issue is that Johnson is too busy with the Knives Out films. There could be more Star Wars from Rian Johnson, but it’s clearly not in any sort of active development. Don’t hold your breath.
Status: Maybe happening.
Announced: February 6, 2018
The creators of Game of Thrones were announced as the creators of another Star Wars trilogy in 2018, a year before everybody got mad at how bad the last season of the HBO fantasy series was. This would-be trilogy fell apart in 2019, and in a recent story in The Hollywood Reporter about the duo’s upcoming Three-Body Problem adaptation for Netflix, they revealed more details about the canceled films.
“We wanted to do The First Jedi,” Benioff told THR. “Basically how the Jedi Order came to be, why it came to be, the first lightsaber.” However, he said that Lucasfilm “ended up not wanting to do a First Jedi story.” (James Mangold’s Dawn of the Jedi film, which was announced in 2023, does appear to cover similar ground, for what it’s worth.)
Status: Not happening.
First Reported: September 25, 2019
Kevin Feige, the architect of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, was reported to have been developing a Star Wars movie in 2019. But, Variety reported in March that he was no longer working on a Star Wars film, and in an interview with Entertainment Tonight on the red carpet for The Marvels, Feige answered with a pretty definitive “no” when asked whether his Star Wars movie was happening. Given the issues the MCU’s dealing with at the moment, Feige seems a little busy.
Status: Not happening.
Announced: May 4, 2020
Thor: Ragnarok director Taika Waititi was announced as the director and co-writer (with Krysty Wilson-Cairns) of a Star Wars movie in May of 2020. There were no plot details at the time and there haven’t been any since. In November of last year, Variety asked Waititi about it while on the red carpet for his film Next Goal Wins. “It’s gonna piss people off,” he said with a laugh. Waititi was not listed as one of the ones in development in the January 2024 press release.
Status: Maybe happening.
Announced: December 10, 2020
Rogue Squadron, Wonder Woman director Patty Jenkins’s movie about a group of X-Wing and other fighter pilots set in the post–Rise of Skywalker era, was supposed to have come out already. Originally announced in 2020 (with a snazzy video, to boot), the film was slated for a 2023 release until it languished in development and was pulled from the release calendar in 2021. Variety reported in March of last year that it had been taken out of development. In an interview with IGN the following month, Kennedy said Rogue Squadron “definitely is something that we still talk about,” which isn’t exactly a stirring vote of confidence for the immediate future of the project. Consider this one lost in the Dagobah swamps unless you definitively hear otherwise.
Status: Probably not happening.
First Reported: November 8, 2022
Variety broke the news that Deadpool 3 and Free Guy director Shawn Levy was in preliminary talks to direct a Star Wars movie in November of 2022, and the project was apparently still alive when Variety spoke to him in October of last year.
“When Kathy Kennedy brought me on board to make a Star Wars movie, her central mandate to me was, ‘I want a Shawn Levy movie. I want a story and a tone that reflects you and your taste and what you bring to your movies — with a Star Wars story,’” Levy said in the interview, which also featured him essentially brushing off a question about whether Adam Driver would return for his film. There are no real details about what the film would be about or when it might come out, though Levy said the development process was paused due to the WGA strike, which might help explain why Levy’s name was not among those listed as directors with Star Wars projects in development in this January’s The Mandalorian & Grogu press release.
Status: Maybe happening.
First Reported: October 23, 2022 (announced officially on April 7, 2023)
Adam Driver may be done with Star Wars, but not every actor from the sequel trilogy is immune to calls from the Force. Daisy Ridley is set to reprise her role as Rey Palpatine Skywalker in this movie, which was announced during the 2023 Star Wars Celebration. It will be set 15 years after the events of The Rise of Skywalker, and Kennedy described it as “the story of the rebuilding of the new Jedi Order and the powers that rise to tear it down.” Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, who directed some of the very charming Ms. Marvel Disney+ series, will helm the Rey film. Steven Knight is writing the movie. Neither the title nor a release date have been confirmed yet, and there’s no casting information beyond Ridley. (She said she was “thrilled to be continuing this journey,” according to The Hollywood Reporter.)
News of this movie first broke in the fall of 2022, when Deadline reported that Lost and The Leftovers creator Damon Lindelof would co-write a movie that Obaid-Chinoy would direct. Rumors circulated that the film would be about an older Rey Skywalker training the next generation of Jedi. However, his vision for the movie — perhaps combined with Ridley’s somewhat unexpected return to the franchise — wasn’t what Lucasfilm wanted.
“I joined the Star Wars universe and was asked to leave,” he told Esquire last April. Lindelof is still interested in being part of the Star Wars franchise, though. “If at first you don’t succeed, try and try again,” he said. “Or, ‘again again try,’ as Yoda would say.”
Status: Probably happening.
Announced: April 7, 2023
A second movie originally announced at that 2023 Star Wars Celebration comes from Logan and Ford v Ferrari director James Mangold. The movie, which is undated and hasn’t cast anybody yet, will take place a long, long, long time ago — 25,000 years before the prequel to the dawn of the Jedi.
“When I first started talking to Kathy about doing one of these pictures, what occurred to me was thinking about what kind of genre of movie within Star Wars I wanted to do,” he said of the film, per THR. “And I thought about a biblical epic, like a Ten Commandments, about the dawning of the Force. Where did the Force come from, when did we discover it, when did we learn how to use it?”
Status: Probably happening.
Announced: April 7, 2023
The third film announced at 2023’s Star Wars Celebration is one from Dave Filoni, the mind behind several beloved Star Wars cartoons and the live-action Ahsoka series. His movie, which like the others doesn’t have a release date yet, was supposed to wrap up the stories of three different, semi-connected Disney+ series, The Mandalorian, The Book of Boba Fett, and Ahsoka. Somehow, this is apparently not the same movie as the just-announced The Mandalorian & Grogu.
Status: Probably happening.
First Reported: September 21, 2023
We didn’t even know this movie was ever maybe going to happen until years after it was axed. Pacific Rim and Pinocchio director Guillermo del Toro revealed in September of 2023 that he’d done a lot of work on a potential Star Wars movie about the rise and fall of the crime boss Jabba the Hutt before the project was canned four years ago.
Del Toro told Collider he was “super happy” with the would-be film, but it didn’t happen. “We were doing a lot of stuff, and then it’s not my property, it’s not my money, and then it’s one of those 30 screenplays that goes away,” he said.
Status: Not happening.
Photo: Disney+
Announced: January 9, 2024
Jon Favreau, the Iron Man director who created The Mandalorian (and by extension Grogu, a.k.a. Baby Yoda) will direct a movie that takes the titular duo to the big screen. News of the movie broke in January of 2024 with few details other than that the film would go into production this year. There is no release date yet.
The press release for The Mandalorian & Grogu still lists Filoni, who is making the three-show wrap-up movie, as one of the other directors with films still in development alongside Mangold and Obaid-Chinoy. Presumably that means there will be two movies featuring Mando and Grogu, as Favreau’s newly announced movie is not the same as Filoni’s. Is that too many movies about basically the same thing, or is this “the Way”? We’ll have to wait and see, but for now there are four movies — this plus the three announced at Star Wars Celebration — that Disney and Lucasfilm have explicitly mentioned as being in development.
Status: Probably happening.