I’m Convinced Star Wars Has Quietly Cancelled One More Movie

April 21, 2026, 11:00am

I was there, at Star Wars Celebration 2023, when then-Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy took to the stage to announce an exciting slate of Star Wars movies. In truth, the experience was almost overwhelming; the atmosphere was electric with excitement, and I remember the thrill when Daisy Ridley herself joined Kennedy on stage. The rumors were true, Lucasfilm was indeed “ramping up” the movies, and the future looked bright once again.

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Three years later, it’s surprising how little of all that has come to pass. Ridley still seems to be enthusiastic, but Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy’s New Jedi Order project is in limbo. James Mangold’s Dawn of the Jedi seems to have been shelved. But what about Dave Filoni’s mystery project, a movie intended to tie up the entire “Mandoverse” plotline? Filoni is now Lucasfilm co-president, so many viewers think that’s the one Celebration 2023 project still likely to happen. For all that’s the case, though, it too looks to be dead in the water.

Star Wars Has Totally Changed Direction – & With Good Reason

According to Kathleen Kennedy, succession planning to train her replacements began at the start of 2024. That coincides with some pretty major changes, with Star Wars pivoting away from the Celebration movies and on to different projects. The Mandalorian and Grogu was officially announced in January, Jonathan Tropper was hired to write Shawn Levy’s Starfighter in July, and Simon Kinberg was commissioned to work on a brand new trilogy in November. My assumption now is that the new leadership wanted to take things in this different direction.

Until January 2024, we thought we knew the direction the so-called “Mandoverse” – stories set five years after Return of the Jedi, spinning out of The Mandalorian – was taking. Jon Favreau had already finished scripts for The Mandalorian Season 4 by February 2023, continuing the Grand Admiral Thrawn storyline launched in Ahsoka Season 1. The Mandoverse stories would have ultimately built to a climax in the Filoni film, which many believed would be titled “Heir to the Empire” after an epic Legends story featuring Thrawn. But the Mandoverse, too, changed when The Mandalorian and Grogu was announced.

We now know that The Mandalorian‘s Season 4 pivot was greater than anyone imagined. “You can’t just take those [Season 4] scripts and turn them into a movie,” Favreau has recently revealed. “There were a lot of characters, it assumed you’d watched the whole show, and it was teeing up what was happening moving into [the second season of ] Ahsoka. It was about Grand Admiral Thrawn and following the larger storyline.” The film will still contain nods to the wider universe, but it’s designed to be attractive to brand new viewers who never subscribed to Disney+.

Has Star Wars Abandoned Dave Filoni’s Mandoverse Movie?

If the journey has changed, why should the destination remain the same? The sad truth is that we haven’t heard any mention of Filoni’s Mandoverse movie for quite some time. In fact, after The Mandalorian and Grogu and Starfighter, Star Wars doesn’t appear to have any other release dates booked (with the exception of the extremely-unlikely December 2027, which would be a head-to-head with Avengers: Secret Wars). It’s reasonable to assume Lucasfilm is holding off until next year’s Star Wars Celebration, where announcements will hopefully be a little more lasting.

Sadly, Dave Filoni’s new role makes his Mandoverse movie even more improbable. It’s true that James Gunn has managed to continue making films while occupying a similar role to Filoni at DC, but he’s a much more experienced filmmaker; Ahsoka Season 1 was literally the first time Filoni graduated to live-action. He now has a much greater workload, an entire studio to coordinate, meaning he’s unlikely to have the time to learn the art of filmmaking.

Underpinning this is a change in popular culture. We appear to have moved to what Christopher Nolan has called a “post-franchise era.” Major franchises are no longer printing money, with even the MCU now dependent on strong hooks, word-of-mouth, and major appeals to nostalgia. Films like Sinners, Oppenheimer, and Project Hail Mary prove there’s now demand for standalone, original releases. Given that context, Filoni’s transmedia movie – tying up years’ worth of loose ends from films and TV shows – no longer seems like a good idea. Sadly, it really does seem to be dead in the water.

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