Five years after The Rise of Skywalker, the road is littered with the corpses of Star Wars projects that were put in development at one time or another only to be shelved or dropped. At one point, we were going to get new Star Wars projects from the likes of Taika Waititi, Kevin Feige, Patty Jenkins,Rian Johnson and Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss, but none have come to pass, at least not yet.
It's pertinent to point that out whenever we talk about a new Star Wars project, lest people's hopes get raised. The latest rumor comes from Daniel Richtman, who's in the business of digging out Hollywood scoops. According to him, per CBM, Lucasfilm is working on a Knight of the Old Republic TV show.
The Knights of the Old Republic franchise started with a pair of video games published back in the early 2000s. This series is set 4,000 years before the mainline Star Wars movies, back when legions of Sith and Jedi battled it out across the galaxy. Those early games were famous for their alignment systems: depending on how you acted in the game, you could either topple the Sith at the end or become a new Sith lord.
Since then, fans have gotten a Knights of the Old Republic massively multiplayer online RPG that was still getting updates as of 2022, not to mention lots of tie-in novels and comics. A remake of the original game was announced a few years back but seems stalled.
Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy mentioned that she and her team were "developing something to look at" regarding Knights of the Old Republic when she was asked about it back in 2019. "Right now, I have no idea where things might fall, but we have to be careful that there is cadence to Star Wars that doesn’t start to feel like too much,” she said back then.
I wouldn't call that a firm commitment, and all these years later, we still only have the barest whisper that something might be happening.
Still, it's possible. While Lucasfilm has had trouble getting a new Star Wars movie off the ground, we've been drowning in Star Wars TV shows, so many that I have to chuckle at Kennedy's comment that she doesn't want the spray of content to "feel like too much"; I think that battle may have been lost. Funnily enough, the Star Wars show that took the most cues from Knights of the Old Republic — The Acolyte — was canceled last year after one season.
Logan director lays out plans for his new Star Wars movie, Dawn of the Jedi
So basically, I would not set my watch to this news. When it comes to anything Star Wars, I don't believe it's real until I see a trailer.
That also applies to a new Star Wars movie called Dawn of the Jedi. This one would be directed by James Mangold, the filmmaker behind Logan as well as the recent Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown. "[Beau Willimon] and I, in relation to Star Wars, have been working on a script, and we'll see what happens," he recently told MovieWeb. "Do we find a way on the page to say something original?"
"The Star Wars movie would be taking place 25,000 years before any known Star Wars movies takes place. It's an area and a playground that I've always [wanted to explore] and that I was inspired by as a teenager. I'm not that interested in being handcuffed by so much lore at this point that it's almost immovable, and you can't please anybody."
A movie about the origin of the Jedi order could be cool...but again, it's a Star Wars movie, so who knows if this will ever get beyond the early development phase?
There is at least one Star Wars movie pretty much guaranteed to make it to theaters: The Mandalorian & Grogu, which is due out on May 22, 2026. Meanwhile, Star Wars TV continues apace; the first season of Skeleton Crew is airing right now, and the second and final season of Star Wars: Andor will premiere on Disney+ on April 22.
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