Following hot on the heels of Star Wars: Episode VII’s theatrical release in December 2015 Disney have announced an additional new movie will launch the following year on December 16 2016. When announcing the film Disney and Lucasfilm stated “In addition to the episodes of a new Star Wars trilogy, Lucasfilm and Disney have begun development on multiple stand-alone movies that will offer new stories beyond the core saga”.
Whilst there is very little further information on what the focus of the film may be, Disney and Lucasfilm also announced the writer and director for the movie. “Gareth Edwards will direct the first film, with a screenplay by Gary Whitta” Edwards could be an interesting choice to direct given his recent huge success with the reboot of the Godzilla franchise. When discussing his involvement Edwards stated “Ever since I saw Star Wars I knew what I wanted to do with my life – join the rebel alliance! I could not be more excited and honored to go on this mission with Lucasfilm.”
As for the films screen play writer Whitta, gamers will best know him for his seminal work writing the very excellent The Walking Dead game for telltale. Whitta also wrote the scripts for the movies After Earth and The Book of Eli. Whilst no announcement of the films plot or characters was revealed rumours regarding potential spin offs focused on characters such as Boba Fett, Young Han Solo and Yoda have been doing the rounds.
It’s very exciting to think that we could be seeing a brand new Star Wars movie every year. The hope of course is that the quality of the movies isn’t affected in any way but only time will tell. Do you think this is potentially too much Star Wars or are you rather excited to have the opportunity to further explore the characters that inhabit the galaxy, far, far away?
Via: IGN
Art by: Benjamin Carre
Ben Corbett-Mills / @benleopards
I think they are trying to do with Star Wars what has been done with comic books, take their full universe and explore different aspects of it. We still don't seem to be tired of comic book movies so I'm interested to see how this turns out.