2 Star Wars Bombshells That Just Changed Everything
Rian Johnson To Helm New Trilogy; Star Wars Live Action Series Imminent
Thursday afternoon Disney CEO Bob Iger, during the company’s quarterly call, announced two things that are going to shake things up in the Star Wars Universe.
First, Rian Johnson (director of Star Wars: The Last Jedi) will be helming a new, non-Skywalker centric, trilogy. It appears that amongst the rocky director relationships Lucasfilm has found their gem in Johnson, “We all loved working with Rian on ‘The Last Jedi.” beamed Kathleen Kennedy, president of Lucasfilm. She continued to sing praises for him saying, “He’s a creative force, and watching him craft ‘The Last Jedi’ from start to finish was one of the great joys of my career. Rian will do amazing things with the blank canvas of this new trilogy.”
The feeling was mutual, and in a joint statement released by Rian Johnson and his long-time collaborator Ram Bergman they responded, “We had the time of our lives collaborating with Lucasfilm and Disney on The Last Jedi. Star Wars is the greatest modern mythology, and we feel very lucky to have contributed to it. We can’t wait to continue with this new series of films.”
No word yet on what story these new films will tell or in what era within the Star Wars timeline they will be taking place, although if I were a betting man, I might consider going ‘all in’ on the Old Republic.
The second bit of news deals with something that Star Wars fans have been looking forward to since the creator himself, George Lucas, first tossed this idea into the ethos after Revenge of the Sith; a live-action Star Wars series. I am so excited about this idea, and with Disney creating their streaming service in 2019 this seemed to be a foregone conclusion.
Not much else is known about the series, but we did get some insight into the upcoming Disney streaming service. Along with the Star Wars TV series, Disney plans on creating other on-going adaptations of Monsters, Inc., High School Musical, and potentially something new from Marvel. In addition to the planned shows, Disney also expects to create 4–5 movies each year exclusively for the streaming service.
As for the coveted price point, Iger didn’t give an exact figure, but he did say that he expects it to be less than Netflix’s $10.99/mo because the service will have less content overall. That concept is fascinating to me because it makes me wonder just how much of the Lucasfilm/Disney/Marvel libraries we can expect to see in the streaming service. Initially, when I heard about the proposed streaming service from the content giant, I was elated because I, like many other people, were expecting to get access to everything Disney — from the movies, to programming on their channels. If Marvel and Lucasfilm movies were in that collection too then, that would be icing on the cake. But one does wonder if the streaming service, at a price point lower than $10.99/mo, will include all of that fantastic content or merely be a place to store new, streaming exclusive shows. Either way, I’ll most likely be getting it; our family drank the Disney Kool-Aid a long time ago.
Those are my thoughts on the latest Star Wars reveals, but I’d like to know what did you guys think of the most recent news from a galaxy far, far away? Do you think we’ll finally get that gritty bounty hunter series? Let me know in the comments below, and as always I’ll see you at the movies!
