Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Cast Wants Star Wars to Take a Break

Star Wars sequel trilogy leads Daisy Ridley, John Boyega and Oscar Isaac agree the franchise needs to “slow down a little bit” and take “a break” after The Rise of Skywalker. The Walt Disney Company CEO Bob Iger previously announced a Star Wars slow down would follow The Rise of Skywalker, touted as the conclusion to the nine-episode Skywalker Saga, allowing Lucasfilm to regroup ahead of the untitled Star Wars film planned for December 2022. The three stars — who have each independently confirmed they currently have no plans to revisit their characters in future projects set in a galaxy far, far away — expressed their desire for a franchise breather when asked to reveal their hopes for Star Wars moving forward:

“What I want is a break,” Ridley told Yahoo Entertainment. “And everyone’s discussed it, but I think we just need to let The Rise of Skywalker have its moment, and then just take a breath. Figure out where next.”

After agreeing with Ridley, Boyega added, “I just think it’s really important — especially now where we’ve got so many options in terms of how we watch content — I think it’s important for, like, the biggest movie of all time to have its place in the cinematic universe. Because that’s how we love Star Wars.”

Because Lucasfilm had no set plans for Episodes VIII and IX after the J.J. Abrams-directed The Force Awakens — despite Disney ordering a new Star Wars episode every two years, leading to an accelerated production on Skywalker — Isaac wants to see the studio focus on making Star Wars “special.”

“I would like to see it slow down a little bit,” Isaac said. “I think to make it special when the next one comes out, and it doesn’t feel like it’s part of an assembly line. But then it’s really particular, specially-made stories that are really about something. And taking the time to find the right people to put those things together and developing it with a real clear arc in mind.”

In September 2018, months after young Han Solo prequel Solo: A Star Wars Story grossed $393 million globally, giving it the lowest worldwide haul of any live-action Star Wars movie, Iger admitted Lucasfilm’s one movie-per-year approach to Star Wars was “a little too much, too fast.”

Iger echoed those comments more recently in a November interview with BBC Radio, where he said Disney-Lucasfilm “made and released too many Star Wars films over a short period of time.”

“I have not said that they were disappointing in any way. I’ve not said that I’m disappointed in their performance,” Iger said. “I just think that there’s something so special about a Star Wars film, and less is more.”

That same month, during Disney’s fourth quarter financial results conference call, Iger noted the company’s Star Wars hiatus on the film side would not mean a lack of development on other projects. There will be “a lot of creative activity in the interim,” Iger said, including a sophomore season order of The Mandalorian.

The Disney+ streaming service is further developing two other live-action Star Wars series: a Rogue One spinoff centered around Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) and an Ewan McGregor-led Obi-Wan Kenobi series set in-between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope.

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is now in theaters. Follow the author @CameronBonomolo on Twitter.