According to a rumor dug up by Collider, Lucasfilm might not be making any more standalone Star Wars spin-offs like Rogue One and Solo, despite the fact that James Mangold was attached to make a Boba Fett movie just last month and The Hours’ Stephen Daldry was in “early talks” last year for an Obi-Wan Kenobi spin-off. Rather than making those movies, Collider’s source says that Lucasfilm will be putting all of its focus on J.J. Abrams’ Star Wars: Episode IX and “the next trilogy of Star Wars films.”
The assumption is that this decision is due to the relatively disappointing box office returns from Solo, which opened lower than every Star Wars movie since Revenge Of The Sith. It still made a ton of money, but it didn’t make Last Jedi money (or even Rogue One money), so it would make sense for Lucasfilm to want to avoid allowing any kind of narrative to develop about people being sick of Star Wars—as if such a thing were possible.
There’s also the fact that both Solo and Rogue One had a hard time actually getting made, with Rogue One only coming together as well as it did because of last-minute reshoots and original Solo directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller getting replaced by Ron Howard way into production. Then there’s Josh Trank, who was making a Boba Fett movie in 2015 but had to drop out, either because he didn’t want to face the pressure of making a Star Wars spin-off or because of reports that he had “erratic” behavior on the set of Fantastic Four. After all of that, it would make sense for Lucasfilm to want to focus on more straightforward projects that make easy money.
Collider doesn’t say if the Obi-Wan and Boba Fett movies that were supposedly in the works are going to be completely canceled or just put on a shelf for a while, but its source says that this shift doesn’t apply to Rian Johnson’s new trilogy or whatever Game Of Thrones’ David Benioff and D.B. Weiss are doing. Either way, this new strategy—which, again, is just a rumor—goes against a plan that has been place since at least 2013, which was when Disney first confirmed that it would be switching off every year between numbered Star Wars sequels and standalone spin-offs.
No matter what happens, though, we’ll still have new Star Wars movies coming out until the end of time.