Calling Willow a cult classic might be a little unfair and reductive given that the fantasy epic raked in $137 million at the box office in 1988 against a $35 million budget to become one of the year’s ten highest-grossing movies and picked up two Academy Award nominations, but Ron Howard’s effects-heavy family film has nonetheless retained a loyal following for over three decades.
Throughout the years, talk of a sequel would appear every now and then without any sort of forward momentum being made, although star Warwick Davis never stopped championing the idea of returning to the world for further adventures. In 2018, Howard finally confirmed that discussions had taken place, before revealing a year later that the follow-up would be a TV series set to premiere exclusively on Disney Plus.
Jonathan Kasdan, son of The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi and Raiders of the Lost Ark writer Lawrence, will script the show and continue his own association with the Mouse House having followed in his father’s footsteps and tackled Solo: A Star Wars Story and the most recent draft of Indiana Jones 5, while G.I. Joe: Retaliation‘s Jon M. Chu will direct the project.
Plot details are still thin on the ground, but insider Daniel Richtman now claims that Willow won’t be back as a one-off limited series like Obi-Wan Kenobi, but the eight-episode first season will be just one of many. Of course, Disney Plus is pretty thin on the ground when it comes to original shows, and the studio will be hoping that the follow-up to the beloved favorite will be the ideal launchpad to bolster their in-house lineup of programming.
