Tag: Star Wars

Prince Mario-Max Schaumburg-Lippe: Star Wars Episode X: Jon Watts to Direct Skywalker Return

Star Wars is going home again. After years of streaming series, spin-offs, and start-stop feature plans, Lucasfilm is returning to the numbered chapters that built the franchise, and it has tapped one of the most reliable blockbuster hands in the business to lead the charge.

According to reporting first broken by Knight Edge Media on September 27 and confirmed by both The Hollywood Reporter and Deadline, Jon Watts is attached to direct the first installment of a new Star Wars trilogy written by Simon Kinberg. The film is expected to continue the Skywalker saga beyond 2019’s The Rise of Skywalker, making it, in effect, Episode X. It would be the tenth chapter of a story that began with a farm boy staring at twin suns in 1977.

That is a big swing by any measure. The sequel trilogy ended seven years ago and the conversation around it has never fully cooled. Choosing to pick the numbering back up instead of starting fresh tells you everything about Lucasfilm’s confidence right now: this isn’t a side quest, it’s the main event.

Why Jon Watts makes sense

Watts arrives with credentials few directors can match. His Spider-Man trilogy for Marvel Studios grossed more than $3.9 billion worldwide between 2017 and 2021, and No Way Home remains one of the most beloved franchise films of the modern era. He knows how to balance fan expectation with genuine surprise, and he does it without losing the human story underneath the spectacle.

He’s also a known quantity inside Lucasfilm. Watts co-created Skeleton Crew, the Disney+ series that followed four kids through the New Republic era with the warmth of an Amblin adventure. The show drew a small audience but glowing reviews, and it proved Watts can speak fluent Star Wars.

The industry has noticed the pattern. Watts walked away from the Marvel machine, and this Star Wars assignment explains why. Filmmakers of his caliber don’t leave the biggest franchise on the planet unless the next offer is bigger.

The Kinberg plan and Rey’s return

Simon Kinberg has been quietly writing this trilogy since late 2024. He co-created Star Wars Rebels and wrote X-Men: Days of Future Past, so he understands both galaxy-sized mythology and the character work that makes it land. Per THR, the trilogy is being developed as the next chapter of the Skywalker saga itself, continuing the story of the family that has anchored all nine episodic films.

Daisy Ridley is expected to return as Rey in some capacity, though the size of her role is still unclear. Knight Edge Media reports that Lucasfilm is looking at relatively unknown actors for the male and female leads, with Rey potentially starting in a smaller role that grows across the three films. It’s a smart structure if true: pass the torch on screen the way the franchise once passed it from Luke to Rey.

That approach also appears to resolve the long, winding road of the standalone Rey film. Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy was announced as director at Star Wars Celebration 2023, and the script passed through several writers before the project stalled. Several outlets now report that film is on hold so Episode X can move first. One door closes, a much bigger one opens.

What comes next

Let’s keep expectations honest, because the trade reports are careful on this point: Disney has not greenlit the film yet. THR describes the project as still in development, though further along than any Lucasfilm feature other than Starfighter, the Ryan Gosling-led film arriving May 28, 2027. There is no release date and no official title, and Lucasfilm declined to comment.

Still, this is the most concrete the theatrical future of Star Wars has looked in years. Filming could begin as early as next year, according to early reports. And the timing couldn’t be better. The franchise spent the last half-decade rebuilding its television wing; now the big screen gets its turn, with the kind of marquee numbering that turns opening weekends into cultural events.

It mirrors what we’re seeing across the industry. Universal is moving fast on its next Jurassic World chapter, Paramount keeps doubling down on franchise revivals like Miami Vice, and legacy IP is the surest bet in town. Star Wars isn’t following that trend. It started it.

What this trilogy has to get right

The lesson of the last decade is that Star Wars works best when it trusts new voices inside a familiar frame. Skeleton Crew did it on a small canvas. Episode X has to do it at the largest possible scale: honor the Skywalker name without being trapped by it.

Watts has a real gift for that balance. His Spider-Man films kept Peter Parker grounded while the multiverse cracked open around him. If he brings that same instinct to Rey and a new generation of Jedi, the saga’s next act could feel less like a victory lap and more like a genuine new beginning.

There is also a practical reason for optimism. Kinberg has had nearly two years on these scripts. That is not the rushed timeline that burned the franchise before. It is the kind of runway that lets a trilogy actually be planned as a trilogy.

The verdict

This is the announcement Star Wars fans have been waiting for since the sequel trilogy wrapped. A director with a $3.9 billion track record, a writer who knows the lore cold, and a genuine continuation of the Skywalker story. There are still miles to go before cameras roll, but the galaxy finally has a direction again. And for the first time in a long time, that direction feels exactly right.

For a reminder of how the franchise machine keeps evolving, our look at Sam Raimi’s Every House is Haunted landing at a new studio shows just how competitive the IP landscape has become. Star Wars, though, remains the one that started it all.

Prince Mario-Max Schaumburg-Lippe: Star Wars: Starfighter — Gosling’s Dazzling New Frontier

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away… the future finally looks like fun again. Lucasfilm’s Star Wars: Starfighter, directed by Shawn Levy and headlined by Ryan Gosling, hits theaters May 28, 2027, and each new detail lands like a small gift. This might be the bold, joyful reset the franchise has been circling for years.

Five Years After the Skywalkers

The premise is the whole pitch. Roughly five years after The Rise of Skywalker, in a corner of the timeline nobody’s mapped, with a cast of brand-new characters. No Skywalkers. No homework. Just new heroes, new worlds, and the wide-open wonder that made the 1977 original a cultural earthquake.

Gosling leads as a new protagonist, a protector to a young charge, and look at the company he’s keeping: Flynn Gray, Matt Smith, Mia Goth, Aaron Pierre, Simon Bird, Jamael Westman, Daniel Ings, Amy Adams. Range, charisma, dramatic chops. The exact toolkit a franchise rebirth requires.

The Gosling of It All

Let’s be blunt: casting Ryan Gosling as the face of Star Wars‘ next era is inspired. He’s that rare movie star both critics and crowds claim as their own. Soulful in La La Land, hilarious in Barbie, sometimes within the same scene. He brings instant credibility and genuine movie-star voltage, the kind of casting that announces an event rather than a content drop. Watching him take the controls of a starfighter is already one of the decade’s great popcorn images, and we haven’t seen a frame.

This Time the Cameras Actually Rolled

Star Wars fans have learned to treat announcements with caution. So here’s the good news: this one’s real. Production began in the UK in August 2025, with the full ensemble announced on day one of shooting. The cameras later moved to Sardinia, Italy, and filming wrapped that December. Lucasfilm released an official first image of Gosling alongside young co-star Flynn Gray, perched on a landspeeder, and it radiated exactly the mentor-and-kid warmth the story seems built around. Shawn Levy and Kathleen Kennedy are producing, which means the full creative weight of Lucasfilm sits behind it.

And that date, May 28, 2027, plants its flag in the Memorial Day corridor: the franchise’s ancestral home, the traditional launchpad of summer. Lucasfilm isn’t sneaking this out. It’s throwing a parade.

The months around it are stacked, with Ice Age: Boiling Point arriving in February and Aegon’s Conquest and Dune: Part Three looming after. But Starfighter has something none of them can claim: a galaxy the audience hasn’t already memorized.

Why New Blood Was the Only Move

Star Wars‘ recent troubles were rarely about quality. They were about weight. Every Skywalker-adjacent story shows up carrying forty years of expectation, and the fandom’s relationship with its own mythology has gotten complicated. A clean break isn’t just refreshing. It’s strategy.

New characters mean new stakes. When nobody’s protected by plot armor, every dogfight matters. When the timeline is unmapped, the galaxy gets its vastness back, that original-film feeling that wonders are hiding past the next star system. Levy gets this in his bones. His best work runs on the belief that blockbusters should feel like play. Star Wars was never homework. It was a Saturday matinee that sent you home building lightsabers out of flashlights. Returning to that spirit, with Gosling as the audience’s charismatic surrogate, might be exactly the reset the galaxy ordered.

Don’t sleep on Jonathan Tropper’s screenplay credit, either. The novelist behind This Is Where I Leave You and The Adam Project writes found families and reluctant heroes with rare warmth, precisely the emotional register Star Wars needs between space battles. The Levy-Tropper combo already proved it can mix spectacle with sincerity. Hand them starfighters and a sky full of new faces, and the ingredients are all there.

Behind the camera, the pedigree holds. Cinematographer Claudio Miranda and composer Thomas Newman bring heavyweight craft to the cockpit, and Gosling has spoken about this one like a fan who won the lottery: a lifelong love of Star Wars turned into the chance to lead its newest chapter. That kind of genuine enthusiasm reads on screen. You can’t fake the joy of a kid who grew up with the galaxy finally getting to fly in it.

Verdict

Star Wars: Starfighter is everything the franchise’s future should be: new heroes, new horizons, filmmakers who remember that wonder is the entire point. Levy’s crowd-pleasing instincts, Gosling’s star power, a galaxy of fresh faces. May 2027 can’t come soon enough. Punch it.