There are, perhaps literally, more questions than answers in The Hollywood Reporter’s new profile on Kathleen Kennedy and the future of Star Wars and Lucasfilm. Reading between the hypotheticals yields only a few facts: The next Star Wars film won’t arrive until 2022; it’s not the Star Wars project being developed by Rian Johnson; Disney is planning to make an announcement in January, after the dust settles on The Rise Of Skywalker. The 2022 date gels with what Disney CEO Bob Iger said during a November 7 earnings call, when he stated that the franchise will take a hiatus following the release of the highly-anticipated conclusion to the Skywalker saga.
Then there are the maybes and the possibilities and likelihoods: Sources say Jon Favreau, creator of The Mandalorian and the tiny miracle known only as Baby Yoda, is likely to “have a lot of say over the future of Star Wars.” And why not? Favreau has made two big live-action remakes for Disney, he’s been involved with the MCU, and he basically invented a cash-printing machine with the aforementioned Baby Yoda. (Here’s another “likely”: the war over those toys this holiday season could very well make the great Tickle Me Elmo bloodbath of 1996 look like a minor skirmish over a parking spot in the Trader Joe’s garage.)
But much of what THR has to say exists in the realm of conjecture—well-informed and reasonable conjecture, but conjecture no less. Perhaps most interesting is the subject of Kathleen Kennedy’s position at the head of Lucasfilm. Her contract is up in 2021, a year before the next Star Wars movie is expected to arrive. Not even Kennedy seems certain of what the future holds for her career at the studio, and as THR notes, she was hired by George Lucas—not Disney. A changing of the guard may be imminent if Bob Iger and Disney chief Alan Horn deem it necessary, and they might.
So we’re getting a Baby Yoda movie in 2022, is basically what we’re saying here.