It is not necessary to go around a lot to verify that something is wrong in ‘Star Wars’ (and by extension, in Disney): ‘The rise of Skywalker’, the last film released in theaters in the saga, arrived in 2019, and by then a new page was being turned in the history of the franchise. Because only a month before, with a tone more of a playful experiment than anything else, ‘The Mandalorian’ was released in the United States as a cover letter for Disney+.
The movie debacle. ‘The Mandalorian’ became a phenomenon in 2019 that revitalized the saga thanks to something as disarmingly obvious as a little bit of a mythical character from the franchise, getting almost thirty million subscribers for the platform in its first quarter. But ‘The Rise of Skywalker’, released at Christmas of that same year, did not get the expected reception.
Although it may take years before we know in detail the entire backstage of a film immersed in a veritable tug of war of authorship and business decisions, what we do know are the financial results. It was very far from being a financial failure, with its more than one billion dollars in revenue, but it was if we take into account that this amount is half of what the first installment of this new trilogy collected, ‘The Force Awakens‘.
More than three years without movies… and what remains. Added to this plummeting drop in revenue was a rejection from a large part of the fans that, although it was not as virulent as the one Rian Johnson had to endure with ‘The Last Jedi’, it did make it clear that Disney had not achieved please the fans en bloc. And that led to a freeze on movies. Not from the franchise, which we have seen grow through series like ‘Andor’ or ‘The Book of Boba Fett’, but it is clear that what makes the mythology of the saga grow are the feature films, and of those there is no perspective for the moment.
Variety claims, in an exclusive article, that the rumors were true, and that the film by ‘Wonder Woman’ director Patty Jenkins, which was to be titled ‘Rogue Squadron’ and would function as a standalone adventure, is definitively cancelled. What’s more: the arrival in the saga with a film by Kevin Feige, head of Marvel, and that many saw with hope as a possible replacement for Kathleen Kennedy, comes to nothing. This departure from Feige may or may not have to do with the passage of screenwriter Michael Waldron, who was supposed to write this movie, to the new ‘Avengers’ movie in 2026.
What happens in 2025? But there is a movie scheduled for December 2025 of ‘Star Wars0 of which nothing is known. Everything indicates, at least until it is officially denied, that this could be Taika Waititi’s long-awaited foray into the franchise. ‘Variety’ affirms that Waititi himself could intervene in it in the style of what he did playing Hitler in ‘Jojo Rabbit’. Other rumors that the publication points to are those who put Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, winner of a couple of Oscars in the documentary category and who made his fiction debut with two episodes of ‘Ms. Marvel’. Damon Lindelof and Justin Britt-Gibson would be writing that film.
In any case, soon we will know something. Disney cannot miss the opportunity to give news about ‘Star Wars’ at the Star Wars Celebration to be held in London on April 7. Let’s remember that there are a few pending series about which almost nothing is known yet (‘The Acolyte’, ‘Skeleton Crew’, ‘Ahsoka’), so this announcement will have to attract attention. Is there hope to save ‘Star Wars’ in theaters?
