Disney CEO Bob Iger recently confirmed that Star Wars films will be going on hiatus for a few years, after Episode IX graces the big screen this December. The news hit the interwebs days after JJ Abrams admitted there wasn’t an over-arching storyline planned for the sequel trilogy and that each director was given the freedom to take their episode in whichever direction they saw fit.
I wondered then if the announced hiatus would be for Lucasfilm to take a step back and reevaluate how they’re going to be handling the Star Wars universe moving forward. Perhaps they would map out a long-term storyline much like what Kevin Feige does at Marvel Studios. According to Entertainment Weekly, that just might be the case. In an interview with the site, president of Lucasfilm Kathleen Kennedy had this to say:
“We’re not just looking at what the next three movies might be, or talking about this in terms of a trilogy. We’re looking at: What is the next decade of storytelling?”
Despite the announced hiatus, we knew for a fact that there are at least two more Star Wars trilogies currently in development, one by The Last Jedi director, Rian Johnson and the other by Game of Thrones showrunners, David Benioff and D.B. Weiss. It was rumoured (and I strongly believe this rumour holds a lot of weight) that Benioff and Weiss are working on a Lord of the Rings-esque Star Wars trilogy set in the Old Republic.
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Now, in a more intriguing update (also by Entertainment Weekly), it looks like Rian Johnson and Benioff and Weiss are all working together to craft the next phase of Star Wars. Kathleen Kennedy said:
“As they finish Game of Thrones, they’re going to segue into Star Wars. They’re working very closely with Rian.”
This gets me all sorts of excited for the future of the galaxy far, far away. Johnson, Benioff and Weiss are all great storytellers who have a tremendous passion for the fantasy genre and Star Wars in particular. This brings up the possibility of the three of them collaborating closely in the writers’ room and mind-mapping five to ten years worth of interconnected Star Wars stories, very similar to what Kevin Feige does over at Marvel Studios.
