The Future 'Star Wars' Movies Will Probably Take Place In A Different Place In The Timeline
The Skywalker Saga might have taken us to a galaxy a long time ago, but the future Star Wars films may take us even further back. Or further forward. Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy suggested that the new Star Wars movies, including the trilogies from Rian Johnson and Game of Thrones' showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, following the upcoming Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker could take place at different points in the timeline. But that won't be for a while in our timeline — Lucasfilm plans to take a hiatus from Star Wars films after this year.
The upcoming end to the Skywalker Saga, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, will not only be the end of a 40-year story, it might be the last we see of this exact period in time in the Star Wars universe for a while. As Star Wars expands beyond the story that began with A New Hope, Lucasfilm chief Kathleen Kennedy hopes the new films following the Skywalker Saga will show audiences just how vast that universe is.
Kennedy told Entertainment Weekly that with recent books, comics, TV shows, and movies focusing so heavily on that era, it may be time to explore different time periods. "Yes, absolutely. I think that that's absolutely on the horizon," she told EW, adding:
"We're looking at whether we can move massively in one direction of the other. It's still Star Wars, and holding on to the DNA of what George created is still very important to us. I think this is a huge opportunity to step into the galaxy in a little bit different part of the timeline."
The films that get to explore those different time periods will likely be Johnson's upcoming trilogy, as well as Benioff and Weiss' series of films that they will develop following the conclusion of Game of Thrones. Kennedy said she has had conversations with all three filmmakers and the Lucasfilm story group about what "the next decade of storytelling" will look like. "We're all sitting down to talk about, where do we go next? We've all had conversations about what the possibilities might be, but now we're locking it down," she told The Hollywood Reporter.
But as the Star Wars franchise moves forward, don't expect them to jump into hyperspeed. It will take a few years for Lucasfilm to decide where to go next. But Kennedy said that rather than exploring different timelines in standalone films like the Star Wars Story titles, they're leaning toward kickstarting another saga:
"We're going to take a hiatus for a couple of years. And we're taking the time to really look at where this is going from the standpoint of a saga."