Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy recently told The Los Angeles Times that the Star Wars universe will move away from the trilogy format.
What’s going on: Kennedy is running a media tour with the release of “The Rise of Skywalker” this Friday. She said the Star Wars franchise is in a transition period with an uncertain future.
- “Obviously, that’s what we’ve been spending so much time talking about, and it’s a really important transition for ‘Star Wars.’ What we’ve been focused on these last five or six years is finishing that family saga around the Skywalkers. Now is the time to start thinking about how to segue into something new and different.”
- “We’re literally making this up from whole cloth and bringing in filmmakers to find what these stories might be. It can take a while before you find what direction you might want to go. We need the time to do that.”
- “I think it gives us a more open-ended view of storytelling and doesn’t lock us into this three-act structure. We’re not going to have some finite number and fit it into a box. We’re really going to let the story dictate that.”
Context: Star Wars has been trying to find its footing under the Disney banner. The franchise kicked off with the idea of a new Star Wars movie every year. That’s why we got “Rogue One” and “Solo” in the off years between “The Force Awakens” and “The Last Jedi.” Essentially, Disney tried applying the Marvel method to Star Wars.
- Poor performance numbers at the box office for “Solo” encouraged Disney and Lucasfilm to slow down their production of the films.
Perspective: Per Cinemablend: “Frankly, this sounds like exactly what Star Wars needs. Too much, too fast is arguably one of the problems with Star Wars under the Disney-owned era so far, and not having a real plan ahead of time before rushing to the big screen is one of the possible culprits for the perceived flaws in the sequel trilogy. A more measured approach could have been used sooner, but there’s no time like the present.”