Kathleen Kennedy Says the STAR WARS Standalone Films Were George Lucas' Idea and Discusses the Future of the Franchise
As we get closer to the release of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy is shedding some light on a few things regarding the Star Wars franchise. While talking to EW, she revealed that the standalone films were George Lucas' idea and went on to talk about the future of the franchise.
When talking about Lucas' role in helping come up with the ideas for the Star Wars Story films, she explained:
“George talked to me about doing this when I first came aboard. He had often thought about doing it and he had actually written down three or four thoughts and ideas, directions you could go. Obviously inside the mythology there were lots of opportunities. So that was the first conversation I had.”
I kind of wish that Lucas would have actually followed through with some of these ideas. But now it's in the hands of Disney, and it looks like they are on the right track. Kennedy wouldn't say what some of Lucas' ideas were, but she did say that a young Han Solo film wasn't one of them. As for the Rogue One idea, that came from John Knoll, who is a legendary visual effects supervisor from ILM. Kennedy went on to say:
“No, we certainly talked about origin type stories, but we didn’t get into the specifics of that. We talked a lot about the Jedi and the foundational ideas that George had thought about when he created the mythology. It was sort of spit-balling ideas.”
She then confirmed that these standalone films will not have an opening crawl like the saga films, saying:
“More than likely we will not have a crawl. We feel that that is proprietary with the saga films. But how this evolves…? We haven’t fully decided, and [traditional Star Wars elements] may be pretty spare for this first one.”
It makes sense that they wouldn't have the opening crawl in these movies, and as a fan, I'm completely ok with that. Kennedy later talked about the future of the Star Wars franchise and where it's headed.
“That’s a conversation going on right now, too. I have to honestly tell you, could we [do nothing but stand-alones]? Sure. But I don’t know. We are looking at all of that…There are [possible movies] that we have been talking a lot about but we are planning to sit down in January, since we will have had The Force Awakens released, now Rogue One, and we’ve finished shooting Episode VIII. We have enough information where we can step back a little bit and say, What are we doing? What do we feel is exciting? And what are some of the things we want to explore?”
As of right now, their current plan takes them through the year 2018 with Star Wars: Episode IX, but there were rumors of a Boba Fett movie coming in 2020, which turned out to be true! According to the report, that was the movie Josh Trank was hired to direct before he dropped out following the troubled production of his Fantastic Four reboot. They say that Lucasfilm came so close to announcing it that they prepped a teaser reel to show at Star Wars Celebration in 2015. I'm sure they'll get around to doing it.
One thing is for sure, Kennedy and her creative team are going to talk about what happens after Episode IX. I'm definitely excited for the future of Star Wars. The prospects of what Lucasfilm can do is pretty damn exciting! They better do a Obi-Wan Star Wars Story!