Over three and a half years have passed since the iconic space opera franchise, Star Wars, delivered a movie to the fans. There was a time when the franchise tried following MCU’s path: to create a large-scale cinematic universe and release at least one Star Wars film per year. However, this strategy was put on hold after the disastrous box office performance of Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018). In addition, the last feature from the franchise, The Rise of Skywalker (2019), suffered the wrath of fans for its poor storyline and questionable character arcs of Rey, Ben Solo/Kylo Ren, Finn, and Poe Dameron.
The strategy of dropping one movie per year seems attractive as it has aided the MCU in becoming the biggest movie franchise in cinema history. However, going down this path may do more harm than good to ‘Star Wars’. Let’s understand this situation from the current status of the MCU.
We can all admit that the MCU now is not as great as it once was. The superhero franchise has been receiving strong criticism for focusing on quantity over quality for quite some time now. On the other hand, ‘Star Wars’ has gone in the opposite direction, allowing the franchise’s representatives to be more careful about selecting future movie projects and focusing more on quality rather than quantity.
So far, we have three confirmed Star Wars movies that are scheduled to come out during 2026-27: James Mangold’s untitled ‘Dawn of the Jedi’ film, Dave Filoni’s untitled ‘New Republic’ film, and Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy’s untitled ‘New Jedi Order’ film. However, according to Variety, Lucasfilm has decided not to go forward with Patty Jenkins and Kevin Feige’s Star Wars flicks.
Disney and Lucasfilm seem to have learned from their mistakes and are carefully treating their future Star Wars movies, which is a good sign for the fans. It would be easy for both Disney and Lucasfilm to give the green light to a weak script and earn millions from it, as the franchise’s fame is strong enough to bring a large number of viewers in theatres. But taking tough decisions of cancelling or delaying films shows the studios’ restraint and focus on delivering quality Star Wars movies. Stay tuned for more updates.