Spoilers All Things STAR WARS - News, Speculation & Spoilers Thread

Thought it was past time for a catch-all Star Wars thread for all the little news items, announcements and stories that don't really rate a thread all of their own. Books, comics, games rumours, Like the MCU speculation thread, I figure this will have an ongoing utility, and will probably deteriorate into a squabble about the nature of canon every third page or so. I've marked it as 'spoilers' rather than 'news' just to make sure nobody wanders in here unawares.

So to kick it off: it looks like the KotOR remake is floundering. Reportedly, a vertical slice (basically a fancy demo) was shown off to the higher-ups at the company as well as LF, and shortly afterwards both the Art Director AND the Design Director were fired. Titles in the gaming industry are wildly inconsistent from one company to the next, but that pretty much sounds like the two most senior positions responsible for the overall direction of the game.

While this sucks, I'm honestly not surprised. Building an RPG is a herculean task at the best of times, and this company is basically only known for porting old games to modern systems. They've never tackled a project of this scale before and I suspect the executives vastly underestimated just how much work, investment of resources, and TIME it would take. I'd like to think it'll be put into more capable hands, but I suspect it's going to be a hack job and rushed out the door. One hopes LF has enough control over the licence to prevent a disastrously inferior product making it to market, but Star Wars gaming has been fairly rough going for quite a while now, so I'm not holding my breath.

ETA: Here's a brief summery of everything that's upcoming, when it's due out and what the latest news is: -

RETURNING PROJECTS​

'Tales of the Jedi' Season 2
'Tales of the Empire'

Announced as a second season of TotJ by Dave Filloni at the end of the Clone Wars 15th Anniversary Panel @ Celebration '23. Set to release May 4th 2024.
[Starwars.com announcement, Apr 4th '24] [Official Trailer]
​

'Andor' Season 2

Filming began Nov 2022 and will continue through to August 2023. Likely won't be released until 2024 at the earliest. (Diego Lune finished filming Feb 9th, '24) [Collider Article] [Diego Luna's Instagram Post]
​

'Ahsoka' Season 2

Announced as being in development by Dave Filloni. No release date yet.
[Starwars.com announcement, Jan 9th '24]​

NEW PROJECTS
(Named)​

'The Acolyte' (Live action series)

Release date: June 4th, 2024
[Spoiler Thread] [Collider Article] [Poster & Release Date] [Trailer]

Spoiler: Cast & Crew

Leslye Headland: Creator/Writer/Director
Amandla Stenberg as a former padawan
Lee Jung-jae as a Jedi Master
Manny Jacinto as Not a Jedi
Dafne Keen as a young Jedi alien (with horns)
Jodie Turner-Smith as "a powerful leader in a very woman centric world" (Dathomir?)
Rebecca Henderson a Mirialan elder Jedi Master
Charlie Barnett as a young Jedi
Dean-Charles Chapman as a Jedi Padawan
Carrie-Anne Moss as a Jedi
Margarita Levieva in a guest star role
Joonas Suotamo as Kelnacca (A Wookiee Jedi master.)

'The Mandalorian & Grogu' (Movie)

Announced as being directed by Jon Favreau, with Favreau, Kathleen Kennedy, and Dave Filoni as producers. Going into production in 2024 and will lead the feature-development slate, seemingly ahead of the NJO, NR & DotJ movies already announced.
[Starwars.com announcement, Jan 9th '24]​

'Star Wars: Outlaws' (Video Game)

From Ubisoft & Massive. Announced 13th January, 2021. Release slated for August 30th, 2024.
[Teaser Trailer] [Story Trailer] ​

'Skeleton Crew' (Live action series)

Announced in May 2022 under the codename 'Grammar Rodeo'. Starring Jude Law, with newcomers Ravi Cabot-Conyers, Kyriana Kratter, and Robert Timothy Smith; EP & created by Jon Watts. Production began August/Sept 2022. Set for 2023 release.​

'Lando' (Series? Movie?)

Announced in Dec 2020, nothing further since. Glover is said to be in negotiations as of April 2023. Glover and his brother/writing partner Steven are reportedly set to write the show, while Justin Simien is out as Director. Reportedly, as of early 2023 the project may have become a movie instead of a show, but nothing concrete yet.​

'Rogue Squadron' (Movie)

Announced in Dec 2020 to be directed by Parry Jenkins. In Development, though seemingly on the back burner. Currently shelved still being worked on in some form.
[Vanity Fair article] [Patty Jenkins Tweet - Dec 14, 2022] [Variety article] [Kathleen Kennedy Interview, Celebration '23]

Spoiler: Announcement Clip

​

NEW PROJECTS
(Unnamed/possibly don't actually exist/status uncertain)​

'Untitled Dawn of the Jedi Movie' by James Mangold

Announced at SW Celebration '23. Set 25,000 years prior to basically everything else. Described as being in the style of a "biblical epic", and dealing with the origins of the Jedi.​

'Untitled New Republic Movie' by Dave Filloni

Set in the New Republic era, and said to tie up and conclude the story threads from The Mandalorian, Book of Boba Fett, Ahsoka, and other shows of that era.​

'Untitled New Jedi Order Movie' by Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy

Daisy Ridley returning as Rey. Set 15 years after tRoS, and will focus on Rey attempting to rebuild the Jedi Order.​

[Announcement article] [Celebration Panel Highlights]

'Untitled Movie' by Taika Waititi

Announced Dec 2020. Seemingly still in Development. Rumours that *something* may enter production and Pinewood in late spring/summer 2023. Nothing official.​

'Untitled Movie' by Damon Lindelof & Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy

In Development​

'Untitled Movie' by Kevin Feige

Little to nothing substantive at this point. Even less so now. Quite possibly doesn't exist . . . yet.
[Variety article] [Kennedy Interview Celebration '23]​

'Untitled Movie' by J.D. Dillard & Matt Owens

Status: Uncertain
​

'Untitled FPS Videogame'

Announced Jan 2022. An FPS being made for EA by Respawn. Nothing else of substance forthcoming yet.
​

'Untitled Strategy Videogame'

Also being made for EA by Respawn and Bit Reactor. Nothing else of substance forthcoming yet.​

'Star Wars: Eclipse'

Being made by Quantic Dream. Announced during the 2021 Game Awards with a flashy CG only trailer, that rumour has it has little to nothing to do with what they're actually doing since it's all very early in development. Set during the High Republic and in an uncharted region in the outer rim territories, it's said to be a "branching narrative game" featuring an ensemble cast of playable characters. Taken with a pinch of salt; Quantic is notorious of over promising & under delivering.​

'Untitled Amy Hennig Videogame'

Announced April 19, 2022. Being made by Skydance New Media in collaboration with Lucasfilm Games. Rumours abound that it's a resurrection of the project known as 'Ragtag' that Hennig developed at EA being being cancelled some years back, but nothing concrete.
​

'Rangers of the New Republic' (Live action series)

Nothing official since it's announcement in Dec 2020. Possibly cancelled and didn't even get past the conceptual stage, yet still officially listed as "coming soon".
[Variety article] [Report on Empire Magazine article]​

 

The 'Light & Magic' documentary series (Directed by Lawrence Kasdan no less!) just dropped on Disney +, and if you have ANY interest in how the VFX of Star Wars came to be, or indeed filmaking in general then I highly recommend checking it out.
I'm only two and a bit episodes in and it's easily the most in depth and well put together look at that aspect of those movies I've ever seen. While a lot of it is talking heads, it's an engaging watch since it focuses as much on the people that made up the nascent ILM as much as the technology.

I swear they must have pulled some stuff out of the LF archives or some of the artists have uncovered forgotten boxes of material for this too since I've probably seen every Star Wars BtS documentary ever, and there's footage and concept images here I don't think I've ever seen anywhere else.

While it doesn't dwell too much on the personal dramas (because those are always a thing, everywhere, all the time) it doesn't gloss over it either, especially with regards to the split with Dykstra, which is both kinda heart-breaking and kinda inevitable.
Just started episode 3 and it's just getting started with Empire, and one presumes episodes 4-6 will cover Jedi, ET, Raiders and the rest of the early 80's explosion of ILM's workload. No idea where it leaves off, but I suspect given that Cameron has been popping up as a talking head that it'll at least get up to the dawn of the digital age with Abyss, T2, & Jurassic Park.
Given the pace, I'd be surprised if this is all they're doing since there's literal decades of material to cover. The prequels alone could take up a whole damn season (not that it will.) So I hope this is an ongoing thing and not just a one-off!

 

One of the filmakers is from my own state
https://www.al.com/life/2022/07/wor...-magic-a-dream-job-for-alabama-filmmaker.html
https://www.cbr.com/light-and-magic-disney-plus/

On spaceships
https://screenrant.com/star-wars-new-hope-spaceships-fx-groundbreaking-why/
http://www.galaxybuiltonhope.com/?Project-Origins

Anybody remember seeing five-min Star Wars on these things?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color-Sonic
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scopitone

 

Bit of an update on the KotOR remake, and I'm not sure that it's good or bad news yet. It seems that the early demo went so badly it's been taken away from Asyr by the parent company and moved to Saber Interactive (I really hope it's not just because of the marketing synergy of their name!)
Embracer Group seems to control a fair number of moderate to major VG developers (including the guys that made the Metro games IIRC) and yet Saber seems to be just yet another that mostly specialises in ports, not developing their own games, much less complex RPGs.

It's tempting to say Star Wars video games have been "cursed", but really it all seems to be the result of mismanagement and executive level stupidity, and this proves that it's not just EA.

 

So any new news in this area?

Maybe we can have a list at the top of upcoming and rumored projects? Maybe that can stimulate discussion?

I am very interested in finding out what is next and when it comes.

 

The next confirmed Star Wars production to be airing is season 2 of The Bad Batch in January. Otherwise, we don't know much. Season 3 of The Mandalorian was originally reported to be premiering in February, though the fact the trailer only says "2023" is making some believe the February premiere is no longer set in stone. Especially since the reason Bad Batch was postponed from its orignal September release was because they didn't want it overlapping with Andor, making it unlikely they'll want Mandalorian to overlap with Bad Batch.

 

I'm hoping they're taking a page from Star Trek by having a show on most of the time, with a few weeks at most in between finals and premieres. Which would mean The Bad Batch begins in January and ends in April, The Mandalorian begins in May and ends in June, and then hopefully Ahsoka will premiere in July.

 

They'll probably need more live action shows then. They can't really get away with using animation as filler.

 

Well, Clone Wars did that for a while.

 

Random thought. The Empire took Mandalore, and mined Beskar. What did they use it on? What was all those Beskar ingots supposed to be forged into for the Empire?

 

I noticed that they seem to be staggering their big live action SFF series in general, they seem to be trying to keep from having the Star Wars, Marvel, and now Willow from overlapping. We did get a couple weeks of overlap with She-Hulk and Andor, but other than they seem to keeping them away from each other.

 

IIRC, there was some concern that the early episodes of Ms. Marvel got lower views because they were streamed the same day as Obi-Wan. Which seems a gross misunderstanding of how streaming works to me, but whatever. Afterwards we did end up with Andor getting postponed, and She-Hulk was moved to a different day of the week so that there would be minimal overlap between the two shows, and when they did overlap they were on different days anyway.

 

OK, I've added a preliminary list to the OP. Will update and expand a bit more later when I have another spare moment.

 

I'm fascinated how the Coming Soon list still includes The Rangers of the New Republic. No Skeleton Crew, Acolyte or next season of Mando. I'm still surprised every time I see Skeleton Crew in a list, let alone for a 2023 release, despite it being the most attractive concept of the announced series so far. (Perhaps after the Acolyte, as I'm liking the High Republic Republic era so far. Ironically, at least two of the books there feature something that does sound like the idea for Skeleton Crew, despite there being no connection. )

 

This is gonna sound like blasphemy but it feels like there's too much stuff on the way.

 

Nope. No requirement to watch it all.

 

Some of these are aimed at specific demographics, so it's not all meant to be watched by *everyone.* In the venn diagram of viewership, there's probably not a lot of overlap between 'Young Jedi Adventures', 'The Acolyte' and 'Visions'.
If Andor has proven anything, it's that just like the MCU; Star Wars can handle more than just one genre and tone (though IMO TCW already proved that, but some people aren't paying attention.)

Plus while it may seem like a lot, most of it won't be out for years (if at all.) The earliest a movie can arrive at this point is probably 2025 (and that assuming the rumours of scheduled set construction on Taika's project slated for next year are true.)

Indeed, aside from Andor's concluding season, the only ongoing shows are Mando and Bad Batch. Ahsoka, Skeleton Crew & Acolyte are all going to be one-off limited series' like 'Obi-Wan Kenobi', and a second season of Boba Fett while still possible, certainly isn't in production and probably won't be before Q3 next year, meaning any theoretical release is at least 18 mouths out. Given that Acolyte literally just started shooting a few weeks back, that's probably not going to arrive until late next year at the earliest. Andor's second season hasn't even started filming yet, so that's not likely to show up until 2024 either.

I mean for real, compared to what's been announced for the MCU's upcoming slate, this is hardly anything at all!

 

Thank you soooooo much! This is hugely helpful! Definitely now a watched thread for me!

Looking at that list...I can understand why you would say it. I am fine with the list (especially since it runs the gamut of Definitely to speculative).

We will see how it plays out. I think how you feel could also depend on if you subscribe to Disney + or not (I kinda feel like you do about NuNuTrek)

 

It started filming last week, and should finish next summer.
https://collider.com/andor-season-2-filming-schedule/

 

Thanks, I hadn't caught that! I've updated the list accordingly.