At the Star Wars Celebration Europe in London, Lucasfilm boss Kathleen Kennedy announced three new Star Wars feature films by James Mangold, Charmin Obaid-Chinoy, and, most interestingly, Dave Filoni. Ever since, franchise creator George Lucas has served as the producer and director of hits like The Mandalorian and animated series like Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Star Wars: Rebels, and Star Wars: The Bad Batch. Filoni has been instrumental in shaping the Star Wars universe; some might argue that he’s done more than Lucas did.
Filoni’s projects will focus on the New Republic and rule out the ideas of similar series, including The Mandalorian, The Book of Boba Fett, Ahsoka, and the Star Wars animated series, The Clone Wars and Rebels.
Following Blockbuster’s unveiling on the Celebration Stage at the Excel Center, Filoni spoke with Collider’s Steve Weintraub to confirm his involvement in the writing process. However, he could not comment on when filming would begin.
An article written in the media magazine Collider did write Filoni’s explanation.”Very little, very little. The way I’ve been describing it is if you grew up when I did you’re aware of the post-Return of the Jedi era that was presented to me. The New Republic is not a new idea. That is not something The Mandalorian created. That’s an old idea, it’s been around a long time. There are just things in Star Wars that we all seem to know if we’ve been around it a long time. There have been a lot of tremendous creatives over the years that have been telling stories in the era that spans the 30 years that now ends with The Force Awakens. But there’s a large gap of time there.”
Filoni continued to say, “Things aren’t that great when we begin The Force Awakens. So Jon and I looked at that time period, and when he knew he wanted The Mandalorian in it, one of the things I told him early on was, “Well, I have this epilogue in Star Wars: Rebels that’s kind of dealing with that time period,” which you’ve seen at the end with Sabina and Ahsoka going off. So, a lot of those threads start to come together, and then I looked at the bigger body of work that’s been done and what’s relevant, and a story will emerge out of that.”