Star Wars: Starfighter is now in production

Set to hit theaters in 2027, just in time for the franchise's half-century birthday

Image: Lucasfilm

The next Star Wars film is now officially in production: Lucasfilm has announced that Star Wars: Starfighter has set its cast and cameras are rolling in England. It's directed by Shawn Levy and will star Ryan Gosling in the lead, along with Flynn Gray, Matt Smith, Mia Goth, Aaron Pierre, Simon Bird, Jamael Westman, Daniel Ings, and Amy Adams.

The studio revealed the film back in April at Star Wars Celebration Japan, along with Gosling's casting. The film will be "an entirely original, "standalone story set around five years after the sequel trilogy, and it's slated to be released on May 28th, 2027, just in time for the 50th anniversary of the franchise. The announcement doesn't reveal anything beyond platitudes from Levy about joining the franchise.

This isn't the next Star Wars film: The Mandalorian & Grogu will hit theaters on May 22th next year, a continuation of the streaming series that launched with Disney+ back in 2019. A trailer screened at Celebration for the film, and given that we're under a year before that hits, I imagine we'll see a trailer for it at some point in the near future: Tron: Ares (October) seems like a good bet for a teaser, and I'd be shocked if we don't get another for Avatar: Fire and Ash when that's out in December.

Between these two films, we've seen a shift in priorities from Disney: the rush to load up its streaming service with content has subsided, with only a second season for Ahsoka in the works. With more attention placed on profitability rather than growth and subscriber numbers, huge, expensive shows like Andor just aren't as attractive to the studios and their shareholders, while theaters deliver more tangible deliverables. Disney has even gone as far as taking projects that were intended as streaming shows and transformed them into films, like Moana 2 and the upcoming Zootopia 2. With Moana 2, that bet paid off.

Mandalorian Jon Favreau had written a fourth season of the series, but with the shift, they changed things up and went forward with a movie. It seems like this isn't the basis for the upcoming film: back in January 2024, The Hollywood Reporter noted that the series could be converted into another film, provided Mandalorian & Grogu does well in theaters.

In the meantime, Starfighter will have an interesting job to do when it comes out: figuring out the next direction for the franchise. It'll be the first out of the gate without the streaming baggage, and it'll come after the events of Rise of Skywalker, effectively giving Levy a blank canvas: they have a starting point with some familiar characters and the state of the world, but they're not really working to tie up any loose ends.

I imagine that this film will set the stage for whatever's to come, tone, story, and character-wise, and it's a period that will likely get cluttered up quickly: Simon Kinberg is working on a post-Rise of Skywalker trilogy, while Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy is directing a Rey-centric film that's gone through a bunch of drafts.

Beyond that, James Mangold is also working on a super-prequel "origins of the Jedi" film on the other end of the chronology. Taika Waititi and Dave Filoni are also supposed to be working on films, but we'll see if those pan out.

As I noted back in April, this feels like a very safe bet for Lucasfilm: Levy's got a very proven track record with blockbusters: his recent run of films like Free Guy, The Adam Project, and Deadpool & Wolverine shows that he's capable of balancing genre, humor, and references, all of which figure quite a bit into these types of crowd-pleasing blockbusters. And of course, there's the half-century anniversary that's going to be hanging over this project from now until it releases.

While I want to see Lucasfilm take on more serious projects like Andor, there's also the need to ease into a new era or reboot, much like The Force Awakens was both familiar and different when it kicked off the sequel trilogy.

Hopefully, it'll be a fun ride that lives up our collective expectations. We'll find out in 2027.