Disney is getting ready to expand the Star Wars brand in a big way, by launching the very first of the Star Wars standalone films this fall, Rouge One: A Star Wars Story. There’s still a lot of question surrounding Rogue One, from the rumored production troubles to the possible changed format of the storytelling (no opening text scrawl?), for the first time in a long time, fans don’t know what to expect from a Star Wars movie.
That confusion extends to the box office, as well. Star Wars: The Force Awakens just walked away with $2 billion worldwide – which is an incredibly high mark for Rouge One to meet. But as Disney’s top executive tells it, the studio is keeping an open mind about the variety of the product it’s making, following a roadmap that extends far into the future.
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“I had a meeting yesterday with Kathy Kennedy and we mapped out — well, we reviewed — the ‘Star Wars’ plans that we have ’til 2020,” says Disney CEO Bob Iger. “We have movies in development for ‘Star Wars’ ’til then, and we started talking about what we’re going to do in 2021 and beyond.“
Iger was discussing Rogue One on a conference call with Goldman Sachs recently (as reported by The Playlist), and discussed his reaction to seeing Rogue One, and its position as the prototype for a new kind of Star Wars movie: “It’s really interesting in terms of ‘Star Wars’ storytelling,” he said. “‘Star Wars’ has only been told as a saga, and this is a moment in time … we love what we’ve seen.”
Clearly Rogue One is going to be a departure from the main Episode films that we’ve seen thus far. Episodes of the main saga are, by design, action/adventure films that appeal to all demographics – with The Force Awakens almost tailor-made to include all quadrantson the modern diversity demographic chart. In doing things like standalone films that can blend with so many other genres of film (with Rogue One essentially being a Saving Private Ryan-style war film), Disney is almost certainly cutting down on the box office potential of those films.
Apparently Iger wants to be upfront and clear that the studio understands this, and therefore won’t hold Rogue One and The Force Awakens to the same kind of earning standard, stating, “We never felt it would do the level that ‘Force Awakens’ did.“
Beyond being a wide-appeal adventure film with a diverse cast of characters, The Force Awakens was also a worldwide milestone, signaling no less than the return of Star Wars to the big screen; the first film in the series made out of George Lucas’ influence and the return of the Original Trilogy cast. Rogue One could never hope to equal that – nor should it have to. With so much variety on the menu, Disney will be pulling in Star Wars money from many directions for years to come.
This is one empire that’s not going to fall anytime soon.
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story opens on December 16, 2016, followed by Star Wars: Episode VIII on December 15, 2017, the Han Solo Star Wars standalone film on May 25, 2018, and Star Wars: Episode IX in 2019.
