Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy: ‘The Rise of Skywalker’ Isn’t Entirely an End

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is an ending — from a certain point of view.

“It’s a mixed feeling of emotions. We don’t look at it entirely as an end, but it is a culmination of the Skywalker story,” Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy told The Star Wars Show at Star Wars Celebration Chicago.

“I’m also incredibly excited about where we’re going and what the future holds and what the new saga might be.”

The Rise of Skywalker concludes the story first put into motion with George Lucas’ 1977 Star Wars, but a galaxy of adventures awaits as Disney-owned Lucasfilm moves on from its nine-episode Skywalker Saga.

With the movie side of the ever-expanding franchise on break until sometime after Rise of Skywalker opens in December, there’s an “appropriate time” to consider the immediate future of Star Wars movies, Kennedy said.

“We’re using this appropriate time as an opportunity to see where we’re going now that we’re leaving the Skywalker Saga behind,” Kennedy told MTV News. “But there’s no question that there’s certain characters that we’ve created certainly in the last three movies that we may very well wanna see down the line in the future.”

Disney CEO Bob Iger previously said the studio would “take a pause, some time, and rest,” explaining there will be “a bit of a hiatus” as Kennedy’s Lucasfilm maps the future of Star Wars on the big screen.

The next saga, planned to include films helmed by The Last Jedi writer-director Rian Johnson and Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, could span the coming decade.

“We knew we were going to close this up, we knew that even before we started The Force Awakens,” Kennedy told The Hollywood Reporter.

“We are looking at the next saga. We are not just looking at another trilogy, we’re really looking at the next 10 years or more. This [movie] is the culmination of the Skywalker Saga; it’s by no means the culmination of Star Wars. I’m sitting down now with Dan Weiss and David Benioff … and Rian Johnson. We’re all sitting down to talk about, where do we go next? We’ve all had conversations about what the possibilities might be, but now we’re locking it down.”

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker releases December 20.

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