There’s been an awakening in the Force – have you felt it? That’ll be many things at once: the shiny new Empire world-exclusive The Mandalorian Season 3 issue hitting the shelves, the fact that Mando and Grogu’s return is now fewer than two weeks away, and the jelly bean-stealing antics of the freshly-released first clip from the show’s return dropping online too. But wait… there is another. Star Wars Celebration is on the horizon, this time touching down on the planet London in early April, and likely bringing fresh goodies from Mando, Ahsoka, Visions Season 2, Skeleton Crew, the concluding half of Andor – and maybe something else too.
According to a report on THR, this year’s Celebration will include the unveiling of Star Wars’ upcoming film plans – whether that’s a single film or a grander slate is unclear. But if so, it’ll mark a shift for the series which, since 2019’s Episode IX: The Rise Of Skywalker, has focused its efforts on streaming series for Disney+. In those years, various film projects have been reported on – from Patty Jenkins’ in-limbo Rogue Squadron, to a Taika Waititi-directed project, a film for which Damon Lindelof assembled a writers’ room, and something produced by Marvel boss Kevin Feige. But none of those have come to fruition yet, and it’s unclear what exactly the next step for Star Wars’ cinematic future will be.
Of course, with Celebration still over a month away, those plans could change – but if movie news was confirmed, it would certainly send a ripple of excitement to audiences who have largely experienced the Star Wars galaxy on the small screen in recent years. At last year’s Celebration, Kathleen Kennedy told Empire that the future of cinematic Star Wars would take place around the sequel era of the sprawling timeline. “We’re moving further beyond the existing sequels as we look to our movie space,” she said. “[The sequel era] is what we talk a lot about in terms of where we’re going with our movies, and just how far out from that we’ll go. That’s very much the space we’re concentrating on.”
The countdown to Star Wars Celebration is on – bring on the new season of The Mandalorian, sure to make that countdown all the more exciting.