Marvel slows down, Star Wars ramps up

When was the last time you went to the cinema? Was it to see a blockbuster or a small indie drama? For myself it was this past week to see ‘The Whale’ starring Brendan Fraser. I love going to the cinema, always have, but the pandemic has changed viewing habits for audiences around the world. We’ve been trained to be patient and to wait a little longer for films and watch them at home a few weeks/months later instead. Great news for television streaming; bad news for movie studios who want bums on seats.

Disney CEO Bob Iger has been addressing these issues at a recent fiscal earnings call with investors and a galaxy far, far away has a big role to play going forward.

The company has hit somewhat of a fork in the road in various aspects of the Disney empire and Iger is on a mission to course correct. Bob Iger is ready to ‘rethink’ the company’s strategy and has a vision to do so. These include greenlighting sequels to some powerhouse franchises such as ‘Toy Story 5’ and elsewhere production on Marvel movies and shows will be slowed down to focus on ‘quality’ whereas production on Star Wars films will be ramped up, with several projects being in various stages of development and Disney/Lucasfilm has every intention of releasing a new Star Wars film in December 2025 (a full decade after ‘The Force Awakens‘ and 6 years after 2019’s ‘The Rise of Skywalker‘)

It’s no secret that there have been several false starts and failed projects such as Patty Jenkins’ much hyped ‘Rogue Squadron‘ being the main casualty but we also have Taika Waititi’s stand-alone film, the Kevin Feige produced-film and Shawn Levy (of Stranger Things) also discussing directing a film. The really interesting thing, however, about the news from the Disney meeting is that various reputable outlets, including The Hollywood Reporter, are stating that the new slate of Star Wars films will be announced at Celebration Europe this April.

This would make sense as if a film is to be released in December 2025 then filming would surely have to begin at some point this year with post-production taking place at a steady pace rather than some of the rushed schedules we saw with ‘Solo‘ and ‘The Rise of Skywalker‘ where those films had to meet their respective deadlines and release dates.

No matter what happens going forward we have to give Disney/Lucasfilm this credit: they said they were going to hit pause button on films to rethink and regroup and they certainly have but there is an ever-growing appetite to see Star Wars return to the big screen and we could be getting closer to hearing what that might look like.

Whatever happens, 2023 is shaping up to be a great year for Star Wars on the small screen with Season 3 of ‘The Mandalorian‘ returning on March 1st and the likes of ‘Ahsoka‘ in the summer and ‘Skeleton Crew‘ likely airing towards the back end of the year.

If there are any movie announcements at Celebration in April then Fantha Tracks will be there to cover it all.