At the moment, the future of Star Wars on the big screen is more unclear than it’s been for a long time, and that’s definitely a good thing. The franchise’s Disney era hasn’t panned out the way the studio or the fans had been hoping, with Kathleen Kennedy constantly finding herself the target of the online scorn.
The Last Jedi split opinion straight down the middle, causing a panic that saw follow-up The Rise of Skywalker retcon as much as possible and double down on fan service in the process, and that only yielded more division, with the conclusion to the Skywalker Saga failing to live up to its reputation as one of the most highly-anticipated movies ever made from either a critical or commercial perspective.
Solo bombing at the box office also saw a line drawn under the Anthology experiment that seemed to get off to a great start with Rogue One, and while Marvel Cinematic Universe alumni Kevin Feige and Taikia Waititi are both developing projects set in a galaxy far, far away and Disney have staked out multiple release dates for Star Wars movies already, we still know nothing about the major shift in creative direction that the franchise sorely needs.
However, in a recent interview, Kennedy may have hinted at where the next generation of big screen stories will be headed, saying:
“Stories have been told within this universe over the last 40-odd years, and there’s now the realization that this is a mythology that actually spans about 25,000 years.”
Writer Laeta Kalogridis was hired last year to script a Knights of the Old Republic movie, and while we haven’t heard anything about it since then outside the realm of rumor and speculation, the fact that the story is set thousands of years before even the Prequel Trilogy and comes with a built-in fanbase familiar with the lore makes it the ideal candidate for a live-action Star Wars pic that can put a fresh narrative spin on familiar iconography.
