The future of Star Wars on the big screen is unclear right now. Once The Rise of Skywalker arrives next month, we’re hearing there will be a three-year pause before the next stage kicks off. There are several projects on the go from different filmmakers, which may suggest a bunch of disparate series are in the works, but it’s possible that Lucasfilm has greater ambitions than that and are actually looking to another Disney brand for inspiration.
We Got This Covered has heard from sources – the same ones who told us Bill Murray was returning for Ghostbusters 3 and Ewan McGregor was returning as Obi-Wan – that the Mouse House wants Star Wars to be more like the MCU. According to our intel, the studio has aims to co-opt the Marvel style of franchise-building down the road. So, that means more crossovers and interconnectivity between the movies and more character interactions from different pockets of the universe. We’ve even been told that they have eyes on some type of Avengers-like event film in the future.
Of course, there’ve already been signs that this was what Disney were planning. To begin with, Solo: A Star Wars Story was clearly intended to be the first step towards the MCU-ification of the brand. It came out only six months after The Last Jedi, much like the heavily stacked Marvel releases, and it was fully intended to produce sequels – the Darth Maul cameo was the equivalent of the MCU’s post-credits scenes, basically.
Solo‘s underwhelming box office total may have put paid to these plans for now, but it’s no surprise that Disney wants to try something similar in a few years’ time. They’ve even got Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige on board to helm at least one film, and possibly a trilogy, for them. This is pure speculation, but it doesn’t seem out of the question that they could even get him to assist with crafting the overall shape of the franchise, too.
But let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves. For now, we know that The Mandalorian, the first live-action Star Wars TV series, premieres tomorrow on Disney Plus. The Rise of Skywalker then hits theaters on December 20th. And after that? Well, we’ll just have to wait and see.
