Dave Filoni Wants to Bring Every Generation of STAR WARS Fans Together in His New Lucasfilm Era
Dave Filoni has a pretty massive job on his hands as the new co-president of Lucasfilm. Star Wars has been around long enough that its fanbase now stretches across multiple generations, and those generations don’t always agree on what they want from the galaxy far, far away.
Filoni isn’t interested in picking one group over another. His goal is to make room for all of them while finding ways to remind fans why they fell in love with Star Wars in the first place.
During a D23 panel for Leslie Iwerks’ new documentary Worldbuilders, which explores how major Disney franchises are translated into theme park experiences, Filoni talked about the challenge of steering a franchise with so many different corners and passionate fan groups.
Filoni explained: "We have several different generations of Star Wars fans, right? There’s original trilogy fans, prequel fans, sequel trilogy fans, Clone Wars fans, expanded universe fans. They all have different interests."
Some fans grew up watching Luke Skywalker take on Darth Vader. Others came aboard with Anakin Skywalker and the prequels, while another generation discovered the franchise through Rey, Finn, and Kylo Ren.
Then there are the fans who spent years with The Clone Wars, the Expanded Universe crowd, and viewers who found their way into the franchise through Disney+ shows.
For Filoni, the trick isn’t simply keeping those groups happy individually. He wants to find the common ground connecting them.
He continued: "And I always look at how we’re going to serve all these different interests. And most importantly, how do we bring them all together because they have this common love of Star Wars, and I think the park is a great place to do that."
It’s an interesting mission statement for Filoni’s Lucasfilm leadership because it suggests Star Wars doesn’t need to have one flavor. In fact, some of the franchise’s current projects already show how wildly different these stories can be while still belonging to the same universe.
The Mandalorian and Grogu was marketed as a family-friendly theatrical adventure while tapping into the classic Star Wars appeal of lone heroes roaming dangerous corners of the galaxy.
The movie may have struggled to meet box office expectations, but its approach offered something accessible to families while maintaining connections to the original trilogy era.
Ahsoka Season 2 occupies a completely different space. It has strong ties to the prequel era and continues characters and storylines that longtime fans followed through The Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels.
Other projects are going after their own audiences. The Ninth Jedi continues exploring Star Wars through anime, while Maul: Shadow Lord digs into one of the franchise’s most popular villains. Andor, meanwhile, carved out its own identity with a more grounded, politically charged approach to the Rebellion.
That variety could be one of Filoni’s biggest strengths as Lucasfilm moves forward. Not every Star Wars project has to appeal equally to every fan. A Maul series can scratch one particular itch while an anime project, theatrical adventure, or character-driven drama can offer something completely different.
The challenge is making sure all of those projects still feel like pieces of the same galaxy rather than disconnected products aimed at separate demographics. Filoni seems focused on maintaining that connective tissue without forcing every movie and series into the same mold.
The next major theatrical chapter will be Star Wars: Starfighter, starring Ryan Gosling and directed by Shawn Levy. The film will give audiences another look at where Lucasfilm intends to take Star Wars on the big screen as Filoni’s leadership era takes shape.
Filoni’s philosophy is pretty straightforward: acknowledge that fans came to this universe at different times, through different characters and with different ideas about what makes it great.
Trying to satisfy every corner of the Star Wars fandom with every project would probably be impossible. Giving those different groups stories they can get excited about while occasionally bringing everybody together feels like a much more interesting path.
After nearly 50 years of Star Wars, there isn’t really one generation of fans anymore. There are several, and Filoni now gets the enormous task of figuring out how they can all share the galaxy.