The 15th annual Star Wars Celebration is underway this weekend in London, and you know what that means! Star Wars news aplenty, trailers, fun interviews, and announcements galore. More than 4,500 fans have packed into ExCeL Centre in London to hear about all things Star Wars.
If you weren’t able to make it to London for the event, you can still watch the official livestream here:
But hey, just in case you don’t have time to watch YouTube all day, we’ve got you covered on the biggest news. We’ll be updating this post throughout the day as new things are announced, but there’s already plenty to chew on. First up, the return of Daisy Ridley as Rey:
Three new Star Wars movies are on the way, including a Rey Skywalker sequel
Star Wars has had a notably rough time with movies of late, with projects being announced and canceled so fast that it’s hard to keep track of them all. Fortunately, we got a bit of clarity about what’s going on from Lucasfilm head Kathleen Kennedy at the Star Wars Celebration.
Kennedy announced that a new series of Star Wars films is in the works, with James Mangold, Dave Filoni, and Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy each set to direct a movie. Despite being announced as a series, it’s not really clear if these films will actually be interconnected or stand alone, since they take place in different parts of the galaxy.
Mangold’s film is to be set during the days of the High Republic, and will chronicle the dawn of the Jedi. Dave Filoni’s movie will be set during the days of the New Republic — that’s the time period following Return of the Jedi but before The Force Awakens — and will connect to the various television series running on Disney+ that take place during those years, like The Mandalorian and Ahsoka.
Meanwhile, Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy’s movie will be a sequel to The Rise of Skywalker that will follow Rey as she tries to found a new Jedi Order. Daisy Ridley will be returning to reprise the role. This is the movie that Damon Lindelof and Justin Britt-Gibson were writing a script for; they recently departed the project; now Steven Knight (Peaky Blinders) is penning the script. According to Deadline’s sources, the Rey sequel movie is expected to be the first to debut.
Ahsoka show gets release month and first teaser trailer
We finally get to see the first teaser trailer for Ahsoka. The upcoming Disney+ series will follow former Jedi Ahsoka Tano (Rosario Dawson) as she puts together a team with the intent of taking down one of the most famous villains from the extended Star Wars universe: Thrawn.
The trailer is filled with all sorts of exciting easter eggs and teases. We got our first look at Star Wars Rebels characters who will be making their live-action debut like Hera Syndulla (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) and Sabine Wren (Natasha Liu Bordizzo), some exciting scenes with Ray Stevenson as Baylan Skoll, and even a glimpse of Thrawn himself:
This trailer also confirms when we’ll get to see the show: Ahsoka is slated to premiere on Disney+ in August 2023.
And Ahsoka wasn’t the only Star Wars TV show to get the spotlight.
Andor season 2 gets release window and first footage
Andor received a fair bit of attention at this year’s celebration, including a panel with producers and actors, various interviews, and a brief teaser for season 2 which shows Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) taking off on a new mission following the events of season 1.
That season ended with Cassian officially joining the Rebel Alliance. According to showrunner Tony Gilroy, season 2 will span the next four years of Cassian’s life. The season consists of 12 episodes, and each block of three episodes will cover a different year of his journey.
The teaser for Andor season 2 hasn’t been released online yet, which makes sense given that they’re not even done filming. “We started shooting in November. We’re halfway. We will finish shooting in August, a year on post, and we’ll come out in the following August,” Gilroy said.
He also talked a little about his relief that the show is ending after season 2. “We know exactly where we’re going so you know what you have to deliver. It was a decision born of survival, but it’s been creatively potent. We’re very pleased, it’s good to know there’s an ending coming.”
And since Gilroy was in a giving sort of mood, he even talked a little about what exactly that ending will entail. Gilroy says that the final shot of Andor is something they’ve had in mind since the beginning: Andor will end with Cassian Andor walking toward his ship to setting out to a mining colony on The Ring of Kafrene. That will lead directly into Rogue One, which begins with Cassian on Kafrene doing the Rebellion’s dirty work.
Andor season 2 is still a ways off, but Gilroy expects it to hit Disney+ in August 2024.
First footage of Star Wars: The Acolyte
Next up is The Acolyte, an upcoming TV series set during the High Republic days of the galaxy when the Sith were just beginning to rise to power, around 100 years before the prequel trilogy. The Acolyte creator Leslye Headland and stars Amandla Stenberg and Lee Jung-jae appeared to give us an update about the series, as well as to show off the very first footage. As with Andor, this footage is not yet publicly available.
The Acolyte was pitched as “Frozen meets Kill Bill,” as told from the perspective of the Sith. This makes it unique compared to other Star Wars projects, which are often told from the heroic Jedi’s point of view. In addition to Stenberg and Jung-jae, the series stars Jodie Turner-Smith, Manny Jacinto, Dafne Keen, Rebecca Henderson, Carrie-Anne Moss, Dean-Charles Chapman, Charlie Barnett and Margarita Levieva.
The first footage shows Stenberg’s Sith character in combat with a Jedi Master played by Carrie-Anne Moss. We also see Lee Jung-jae wielding a lightsaber and a spine-tingling shot of a group of Jedi all igniting their lightsabers in unison. The Acolyte is the furthest back in the Star Wars canon that any film or show has been set thus far, and will be “about power and who is allowed to use it.”
No release date was announced for The Acolyte; it’s expected to come out sometime in 2024.
First footage of Star Wars: Skeleton Crew revealed
We end our Star Wars journey with Skeleton Crew, another new series on its way to Disney+. This one has been pitched as a mash-up between Stranger Things and Star Wars; it stars a group of children who are spirited across the galaxy on a mercenary ship and then need to pilot their way back home. And also Jude Law is there.
Skeleton Crew is being helmed by the MCU’s Spider-Man director Jon Watts, and will feature some star-studded guest directors like the Daniels of Everything Everywhere All At Once fame as well as The Green Knight director David Lowery.
Gizmodo’s Cheryl Eddy was at the Star Wars Celebration and did a great write-up of what sort of footage fans got to see in this exclusive trailer:
"In new footage introduced by Jude Law and child actors Ravi Cabot-Conyers, Kyriana Kratter, and Robert Timothy Smith, audiences were shown a trailer that opens with kids living on an unknown forested world. They go to school, living their lives riding speeder bikes, but longing for adventure and they find it when they go exploring in the woods one night. Their parents return home to a vision of Star Wars suburbia unlike anything we’ve seen in the franchise before… and find that their kids have gone missing. Those kids, our main group—two young girls (one wearing a Star Trek: TNG -tyle head visor), a young boy, and a small alien that looks very much like he’s a young Ortolan, one of the blue pudgy alies popularized by Max Rebo in Return of the Jedi—appear to have found their way aboard a mercenary starship. There are shots of them encountering weird creatures, holograms of their parents back home begging for them to return, and the kids being menaced by pirates (including, it seems, the Nikto pirate formerly of Gorian Shard’s crew in The Mandalorian, further tying the series’ timeline into the post-Return of the Jedi era). The kids find themselves on the run from blaster fire in what looks like a pirate base and flying away on their new ship before the trailer concludes with them locked up in a prison cell carved out of a cave. A hooded figure approaches, floating the key to their freedom in front of the kids with a whimsical display of the force. “He’s a Jedi!” One of the kids exclaims as the figure lowers their hood to reveal that it is Jude Law’s mysterious character."
Skeleton Crew doesn’t currently have a release date, but Disney has teased that it will premiere sometime in 2023.
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