The Future of Star Wars: With Three New Movies and a Prequel Series, Lucasfilm Takes Its Biggest Bet Yet

The past, present and future of Star Wars were on full display Friday at the Star Wars Fan Celebration convention, as Lucasfilm unveiled the most robust look yet at the company's plans for the hallowed franchise. As studio head Kathleen Kennedy revealed three new feature films and a first look at four upcoming TV series, Lucasfilm made it clear that it was aiming to test how far it could expand the Star Wars galaxy: creatively, logistics and even history.

Beginning with "The Phantom Menace" and ending with "The Rise of Skywalker", the previous nine "The Star Wars films have all been set over a span of roughly 70 years, straddling the climactic battle of Yavin in 'A New Hope' which served as the franchise's official fulcrum for six decades. All live-action TV and spin-off animated series have run within this time frame, including shows launched on Disney+: "The Mandalorian", "The Book of Boba Fett", "Andor", "The Bad Batch", and shows at come "Ahsoka" and "Skeleton Crew". ("Visions," an animated anthology series launching in 2021, exists outside of Star Wars canon.)

Between the hordes of Star Wars-related novels, comic books, and video games, however, the Die-hard fans will know that the full history of the franchise spans tens of thousands of years, and Lucasfilm intends to begin tapping into this larger narrative landscape in live-action, starting with "The Acolyte." . First announced in 2020, the Disney+ series breaks new ground on two fronts: it's set roughly 100 years before the events of "The Phantom Menace," and it will follow the rise of the Sith during the final days of the High Republic.

"I really wanted to dive into the Star Wars universe and tell the story of this whole world that I love so much from a villain's perspective," creator and showrunner Leslye Headland said during the presentation on Friday. "The first thing that became apparent was that we're going to have to settle this between the High Republic and the beginning of the prequels. Not only because it's such an exciting part of the timeline, but also because that's when the bad guys are more. They're the underdogs."

Kennedy later revealed that director James Mangold ("Logan," "Indiana Jones and the dial of fate”) will make a feature film set 25,000 years before the Battle of Yavin, in what amounts to an origin story for the Force, the singular metaphysical thread that ties the entire franchise together. >Variety After the presentation, Mangold spoke about the genre of biblical epics that dominated Hollywood in the 1940s and 1950s.

"When I first told Kathy Kennedy about this, I said, " I just see this opening towards doing a sort of Ben-Hur or Ten Commandments about the birth of the Force,” Mangold said. “The Force has become a kind of religious legend that runs through all these films. But where does it come from? How was it found? Who found it? Who was the first Jedi? That's what I'm writing right now."

These two projects go far beyond what the public considers Star Wars, not just in in terms of when they're set, but what they're about: no Skywalkers, no empires, focusing on characters who live in darkness and chaos. For the core fandom, it's hugely exciting, filled with the promise of bringing to life periods that only existed on the franchise's dark periphery. But Star Wars has become a pop culture phenomenon that spans decades, not because of the dense sprawl of its mythology, but because of the imaginative spark of its storytelling and the adorable verve of its characters.