Jon Watts is pretty good at telling stories of youth. Even before directing Spider-Man: Homecoming, Far From Home, and No Way Home, he delivered the under-seen Cop Car – about a pair of kids who stumble upon an abandoned cop car and take it for a joyride. And while his immediate future looks uncertain after he stepped away from the MCU’s Fantastic Four movie, it sounds like Watts has another project in the works about young characters in a world much bigger than them. According to Vanity Fair, the upcoming Star Wars series that Watts has been attached to is in a similar vein.
While Watts’ galactic series remains far, far away for now (there’s Obi-Wan Kenobi, Andor, The Mandalorian Season 3, Ahsoka and The Acolyte to come first), Vanity Fair has reported a few more details on what it’s likely to be – claiming that it’s set in the wake of Return Of The Jedi, and is inspired by “classic Amblin coming-of-age adventure films of the ‘80s”. The series has been casting four child roles aged 11-12 years old. Plus, its internal Lucasfilm codename is ‘Grammar Rodeo’, a reference to a Simpsons episode in which Bart, Milhouse, Nelson and Martin rent a car with a fake ID and drive it to the World’s Fair. Could we be getting a show about four young Padawans stealing an X-Wing?
Concrete details on Watts’ show remain under wraps for now – but that could possibly change if any news is unveiled at the upcoming Star Wars Celebration. For now, it sounds like a project that fits with the filmmaker’s oeuvre – and an altogether different kind of series for the burgeoning small-screen Star Wars universe.