Lucasfilm Expects A Slowdown Of Star Wars Spinoff Movies

We hope you weren’t holding your breath for that Lando Calrissian spinoff movie…

Speaking to Vanity Fair as part of the outlet’s galactic blowout, Lucasfilm chief Kathleen Kennedy warned that standalone Star Wars movies have fallen onto the back-burner in the aftermath of Rogue One and Solo. The latter proved particularly costly for the Powers That Be at Disney, recouping just $390 million worldwide on a budget of $270 million.

For the sake of perspective, Rogue One joined The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi in the billion-dollar club with relative ease, so it’s not too difficult to see why Solo‘s underwhelming box office return prompted some soul-searching and number-crunching over at Lucasfilm.

The result? No more standalone Star Wars movies – at least not for the foreseeable future.

“I think there is a larger expectation that Disney has,” says Kennedy. “On the other hand, though, I think that Disney is 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.”

Kennedy is also right in saying that the anthology format only works for self-contained stories (i.e. Rogue One), whereas the likes of Marvel Studios are able to build entire franchises around their characters.

For now, the focus appears to be very much on The Rise of Skywalker (ETA: December 2019) along with those new movie series from Rian Johnson and Game of Thrones duo David Benioff and D.B. Weiss. And when it comes to those stories spun out from the franchise timeline, Star Wars fans still have The Mandalorian to look forward to this November when it makes its debut on Disney Plus.

Tell us, though, in regards to that galaxy far, far away, what are you most excited about? As always, leave your thoughts in the comments section down below.