except he also has to deal with Lucasfilm.

you are calling the game before the team has taken the field.

They probably told him it's got to be a lead in movie to The Acolyte.

completely forgot about this one but glad to hear that it's moving forward....

however...this begs the question...why haven't we heard anything about the Rey movie? Literally the first day of 2024 it was announced Charmene Obied Chanoy (i know i butchered that one) was going to direct it and made her comments about women in star wars blah blah blah blah....

after all that fizzled out there pretty much hasn't been anything said other than the guy who was supposed to direct had an article that came out 2-3 months ago about him being excited to work on the Peaky Blinders movie and start his own studio......sounds like the Rey movie isn't a priority and id say this all but confirms it....

does that film actually get made? are they waiting until kathlene kennedy is gone? and does that mean she's gone soon? is the lawsuit with gina carano and that dealing with star wars having some sort of effect now that it's 100% confirmed this will go to discovery and court in september of 2025?

we've got info now on the Mando movie and dawn of the jedi movie......but nothing on Rey......

Daisy Ridley finally/briefly commented on it just yesterday (below). To me, "evolving" is code for having trouble cracking it, but maybe they've finally found a direction they like. Either way, reading the tea leaves, if I had to guess, it's been delayed (yet again) and they've slid Mangold's movie ahead of it now. Seeing as Willimon has almost certainly been writing while Mangold wraps A Complete Unknown (which releases this Christmas), if they can start shooting next summer they could easily make that December 2026 date, the one the Rey movie was likely going to take (but was never officially slotted for). It sounds like some kind of announcement is coming, so hopefully we get some clarity relatively soon…

Daisy Ridley talks about her upcoming #StarWars movie:

“Things are evolving. I continue to be very excited. There will be an update soon.”

Source: Collider pic.twitter.com/ijPi5RiiLz

— Screen Rant (@screenrant) October 23, 2024

I fully admit it's very, very, nerdy or lame. But to me it's fun and a change of pace. There are some good routines and workouts on youtube. Once you learn the basic movement numbering system, you can use something as simple as a phone number to give you a set moves/combo.

At the very least, I'm getting some use out of the 100s of dollars I have spent on lightsabers. I figure it better than letting them collect dust.

Aaaand now it's official. From Matthew Belloni's newsletter tonight. This must be the "update" Ridley was referring to. It's still somehow shocking how not shocking news like this continues to be. I genuinely don't understand how Kennedy is still running Lucasfilm at this point...

Quote:

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More disturbance in the Lucasfilm force: Yet another Star Wars filmmaker has exited the Lucasfilm galaxy, I'm told. Steven Knight, the veteran screenwriter who created Peaky Blinders, is off the New Jedi Order film project set to be directed by Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy and star Daisy Ridley. Knight was enlisted last year after previous writers Damon Lindelof and Justin Britt-Gibson were also hired with much fanfare and later dropped into a sarlaac pit. Lucasfilm is now hunting for a new writer on New Jedi Order, which almost certainly means the film will not be ready by December 2026, the date Disney has staked out for a Star Wars release.

That date follows Jon Favreau's Mandalorian and Grogu, which just wrapped shooting and is on track for May '26, but Disney has not named the December film. Kathy Kennedy, who is somehow still running Lucasfilm, could drop another of the various Star Wars projects on that date, but that would mean starting production very soon, so I'm betting Disney will abandon the December slot, just like it did this week with Marvel's troubled Blade movie.

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Time to let ChatGPT have a shot at the script.

A long time ago, but about 40 years more recent,

In a galaxy that may or may not be far, far away depending on overall universal expansion as well as the general movement and rotation of galaxies......

They need to move MANDALORIAN & GROGU to December 2026, that film should not be going up against AVENGERS DOOMSDAY.

Lucasfilm are putting their foot in a bear trap by repeating the same mistake as they did with releasing SOLO in the same month as INFINITY WAR. https://t.co/Ki8BdhTDBE

— Jacob (@JacobFisherDF) October 25, 2024

I've mostly decided to tap the breaks on posting about Star Wars on TexAgs for my own sanity, but feel compelled to say that following the franchise closely, I'd put the odds of the Daisy Ridley movie being made right now at 60 billion to 1 - and I know Han, never tell you the odds.

If you want to make a movie, the movie is getting made, particularly when your studio is Death Star sized.
But more importantly is the fact that Daisy Ridley is a terrible liar, and every time she does an interview, she can't not make it obvious that there is no script, no nothing, and she's just passing the buck.

She seemed to be taking the Harrison Ford / Ewan McGregor path of "get me the hell away from this thing" when her trilogy was done, so it seemed really surprising that she'd want to be in them anyway. Perhaps has she been typecast the way Mark Hamill or even Hayden was back in the day, and is struggling to find projects that don't just emulate the Rey role?

she was in Kenneth Branagh's Murder on the Orient Express in '17, but I don't remember anyone saying she was particularly magnificent. She was really funny as a bunny in Peter Rabbit, but didn't get invite back for the sequel. This year she was in the Young Woman and the Sea but that flat lined into a Disney plus release.

Like the whole Lord/Miller/Solo debacle, when you hire those guys you know what you're getting.

She has to have blackmail or something on somebody at this point, right?

It's honestly inexplicable. I can't imagine how she could do a worse job.

They could literally just churn out low IQ fanboy service stuff in the meantime while they figure out "their direction" and people would eat it up and they'd print money. But for some reason, they can't even manage to do that.

That is what I don't understand.

Is she so dumb and bad at her job that there can't be a bifurcated process where they have their little auteur projects while also having a lower budget "fan service" wing that just churns out content most people actually want to see?

Let the stuff the fanboys want to see be the profit makers and then you can do one or two projects a year that satisfy the other crowd.

I'm sure it's "more complicated" than that, but I don't know why it needs to be. I like Filoni and think he could handle it, but I think he needs to stop trying to tie everything together and start doing some one off projects that are self contained. I feel like all his prior stuff is starting to just be made worse by the newer things they're doing.

TCTTS said:

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They need to move MANDALORIAN & GROGU to December 2026, that film should not be going up against AVENGERS DOOMSDAY.

Lucasfilm are putting their foot in a bear trap by repeating the same mistake as they did with releasing SOLO in the same month as INFINITY WAR. https://t.co/Ki8BdhTDBE

— Jacob (@JacobFisherDF) October 25, 2024

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Idk, it could be the ultimate battle of two franchises that have worn their diehard fanbases down with way too many disappointing products over the last 5 years

That is what I am leaning towards.

I think they're grinding the older crowd/original audience down to a nub with it basically being a full time job to keep up with the content. Which would be fine if it was all great, we wouldn't complain so much.

But when I have to watch hours of mediocre to bad content to just know what's going on in the universe to prepare for the big films, I don't have time for that and it's kind of insulting to me that they think most of us do.

Cinco Ranch Aggie said:

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CC09LawAg said:

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She has to have blackmail or something on somebody at this point, right?

It's honestly inexplicable. I can't imagine how she could do a worse job.

They could literally just churn out low IQ fanboy service stuff in the meantime while they figure out "their direction" and people would eat it up and they'd print money. But for some reason, they can't even manage to do that.

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That would probably go against their new-found orthodoxy that "the Force is female" or DEI-garbage or let's bring Earth politics to a galaxy far, far away ... Doing any project that the vast majority of Star Wars fans would like would be called misogyny, sexist, racist, x-phobic, etc.

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It's just not true.

It is an interesting point.

But one advantage that Star Wars has is that it has the potential to tell stories without limitations in time or location.

As an example, as much as I love LOTR and Tolkien, that world is fairly limited for creating new storylines or characters and there are a ton of things like gods, mythical beings, religious subtones, different events in different ages, etc. that any new story would have to honor and respect. It's much more fleshed out than the Star Wars universe. So if you try to create new stories, you have to respect all of those things or you're going to make all the original fans angry.

With Star Wars, you don't have all of that "lore" that you're necessarily beholden to, outside of the Skywalker saga. Which in the grand scheme of an entire potentially infinite universe is just a tiny speck in the timeline. Just go to a totally different corner of the galaxy and say it's 10,000 years ago, or 5,000 years in the future, or whatever. All new characters, just keep the general feel, set design, costume design, etc.

I don't know. They make it all so complicated and they have this huge sandbox to play in.

I think it's obvious they are afraid to really branch out. Almost everything Disney has done with Star Wars is tie it the original saga. Always go back to the same planet, characters, time frame, etc. Even The Acolyte, which should have stood on its own, they felt the need to have Yoda, Ki Adi, and apparently Plagueis.

Agreed. But then you see things like the Tales of the Jedi be so well received and it's like, how do they not pick up on this being untapped potential?

Go give us some far away planet with a new protagonist in an Asian inspired atmosphere with samurai like force users or something. You could literally just have a dartboard with different ideas and mash 10 of them together randomly and then just make it Star Warsy and it would print money.

Make it animation if you have to test the waters so it isn't some big budget film project.

CC09LawAg said:

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It is an interesting point.

But one advantage that Star Wars has is that it has the potential to tell stories without limitations in time or location.

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And they refuse to do it. It is the most frustrating part to me.

We don't need everything to connect. It is a giant universe with hugely diverse species and worlds. Tell great stories about these worlds. Tell us stories about these species that have been explored in legends that are super interesting and unique.

Yep. And then that model gives you so much flexibility to cater to different demographics. You can create content for the OG fans, the fans who came around from the prequels and sequels, create kid content...

It just seems like there's a giant 'EASY' button right in front of their face and they refuse to use it out of some misguided sense of pride or trying to create high brow content or something.

We all love Andor, but not EVERYTHING has to be Andor, and in fact, if it were, it would take away from what made it special in the first place.

Idiots.

I do wonder how a new Star Wars movie would fare that had zero connection to the nine main Skywalker movies. Say they didn't bring Daisy Ridley back for whatever reason and set it, I don't know, a hundred years after The Rise of Skywalker. But it was an attempt to revitalize the franchise with a new cast, a new, good-vs-bad story told in similar, epic fashion, the Force was obviously still a thing, etc. But next to no reference to past events, the Skywalkers, etc. Would anyone still care? Or is the franchise inexorably connected to the main, 60-ish-year time period for people to even remotely give a *****

TCTTS said:

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I do wonder how a new Star Wars movie would fare that had zero connection to the nine main Skywalker movies. Say they didn't bring Daisy Ridley back for whatever reason and set it, I don't know, a hundred years after The Rise of Skywalker. But it was an attempt to revitalize the franchise with a new cast, a new, good-vs-bad story told in similar, epic fashion, the Force was obviously still a thing, etc. But next to no reference to past events, the Skywalkers, etc. Would anyone still care? Or is the franchise inexorably connected to the main, 60-ish-year time period for people to even remotely give a *****

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Season one of Mandalorian had a loose tie of Grogu to Yoda. IMO the show got weaker the more it was connected to Skywalker movies at the end of season 2 into 3.

Right, but it was still set post-ROTJ, pre-TFA, with remnants of the Empire, the first hints of The First Order, etc. I'm talking about something completely removed from all of that, where it's all distant history, etc.