It appears Lucasfilm is hitting the pause button on planned Star Wars spinoffs in the wake of the lukewarm reaction to Solo: A Star Wars Story…
Lucasfilm is reportedly rethinking their plans for upcoming Star Wars spinoffs after audiences had a lukewarm reaction to Solo: A Star Wars Story.
According to Collider, executives at Lucasfilm have hit the pause button on any potential Star Wars standalone spinoffs already in the works as they are now focused on just making Star Wars: Episode IX the best movie possible before moving onto other films.
There had already been early talks on a potential Obi-Wan Kenobi standalone movie starring Ewan McGregor as well as a rumored Boba Fett film that had Logan director James Mangold attached to develop the project.
Now it appears both of those movies have been shelved while Lucasfilm re-evaluates plans for the future after the lackluster success of Solo: A Star Wars Story.
While Solo wasn’t a massive failure at the box office by any means — $192.8 million earned domestically and $339.5 million worldwide — those numbers don’t jive with what is typically expected for a Star Wars film four weeks into its release. Solo didn’t receive bad reviews but audiences just didn’t seem all that interested in seeing an origin story for Han Solo that didn’t star Harrison Ford in the lead role.
Solo also failed to live up to the bar set by the first spinoff film, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, which pulled in over a $1 billion at the worldwide box office.
Unfortunately almost all of the Star Wars spinoffs have been plagued by problems including massive reshoots on Rogue One as well as a director change on Solo after Chris Miller and Phil Lord left the project and were replaced by Ron Howard long after filming for the movie had already started.
It appears that less than stellar performance by Solo has Lucasfilm second guessing its plans for those spinoff films going forward while plans are still in place for several more Star Wars films in the next few years.
While J.J. Abrams will close out the newest Star Wars trilogy with Episode IX opening next year, director Rian Johnson is already in line to direct a new series of Star Wars films while Game of Thrones show runners David Benioff and Dan Weiss have also been hired to develop a series of Star Wars movies separate from the original trilogy involving the Skywalker saga.
Of course it’s always possible that Lucasfilm will change course yet again — this same set of unfortunate circumstances have plagued DC/Warner Bros. for years — but for now it appears all of the standalone Star Wars spinoffs are on hold until further notice.
