Star Wars: Rian Johnson Excited About Upcoming Projects From Taika Waititi, Krysty Wilson-Cairns And Leslye Headland

This year’s Star Wars day has brought even more treats for Star Wars fans than usual as Lucasfilm not only debuted the series finale of The Clone Wars and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker on Disney+, but also confirmed news of future Star Wars stories. The company confirmed that Oscar winning writer and Thor: Ragnarok director Taika Waititi is directing a new feature film which he’ll co-write with 1917’s Krysty Wilson-Cairns, in addition to announcing that Russian Doll creator Leslye Headland will serve as writer/producer for a new Star Wars series on Disney+. One person that quickly expressed their excitement for this news? None other than Star Wars: The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson.

“I have NO idea what kind of (Star Wars) will come out of Taika and Krysty’s and Leslye’s brains,” Johnson wrote on Twitter after the announcement. “If I tried to guess I’d be wrong, and that is the most exciting thing I can imagine.”

It’s unclear just what these new Star Wars movie and TV series will be about anyway as Lucasfilm has never publicly spoken about their intentions for the future of the franchise in live-action. Plans for new movies from Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss were seemingly scrapped when the pair departed the project, with former Disney CEO Bob Iger previously confirming they’d be taking a pause from theatrical Star Wars movies after last year’s Episode IX.

Lucasfilm is preparing to begin a new publishing initiative for Star Wars titled “Star Wars: The High Republic,” telling the story of the galaxy some 200 years before the events of the prequel trilogy and featuring a new cast of characters. For now these stories will seemingly only exist on the page for fans, but it will certainly lay the groundwork for new stories that could be explored on the big screen or on Disney+ at some point.

Even Johnson is set to return to the galaxy far, far away, with the writer/director confirming that he remains in talks with Lucasfilm to develop a new trilogy of movies set in the universe. Even now, almost three years after the announcement was made, we don’t know what the pitch or idea for these films actually is, though the official announcement said the series “will introduce new characters from a corner of the galaxy that Star Wars lore has never before explored.”