After a series of box office home runs with their reinvigorated Star Wars franchise, Disney hit their first roadblock with Solo: A Star Wars Story, which opened to less-than-stellar reviews and a disappointing box office return. According to Collider, this has led to the company slamming the brakes on their Star Wars Story spinoff films in the near-future.
No other films in the spinoff franchise have actually been confirmed, though strong rumours indicate that entries for Boba Fett and Obi-Wan are at some stage of pre-production.
Solo did really well by any blockbuster standard when it came to the box office, but didn’t quite hit the the lofty expectations Disney has for such a massive Star Wars event. Having your movie make shitloads of money but not quite as much as you would like is probably not the worst problem to have. Many also argue that it didn’t do quite as well thanks to being up against Avengers: Infinity War and Deadpool 2.
This absolutely doesn’t mean we’re not getting more Star Wars though. Obviously we have the J.J. Abrams-led Episode IX, and we have two confirmed trilogies to come after that – one helmed by Last Jedi auteur Rian Johnson, and one written by Game of Thrones scribes David Benioff and D.B. Weiss. Those films aren’t part of the Star Wars Story branding, and are still going ahead as planned.
Again, none of this is confirmed by Disney or Lucasfilm, and the planned projects hadn’t had an official announcement anyway. But it definitely could indicate a pivot towards telling big new stories in the Star Wars universe rather than leaning on filling in the gaps in existing mythos – like Solo and Rogue One did.
We’ll tell you more as it emerges.
