nerd radio

Get ready for the new daily show

STAR WARS CELEBRATION: Kathleen Kennedy says they need to create a new saga and Han Solo still has a future

May 29th, 2022 by Marc Comments

While she didn’t reveal much on her panel at Star Wars Celebration, Total Film managed to get Kathleen Kennedy to chat a little bit more candidly about some of the things she touched up on stage and there are some cool details here.

The Lucasfilm President confirmed that Taika Waititi’s Star Wars movie is the next one to film and that she hopes we’ll see it before the end of 2023. When asked if they’d aim for the December slot again, she said: “We haven’t locked anything in”.

So, while so far at Celebration movies have not come up, are movies still a priority?

“Of course, they’ve been in movement all along,” she says.

“As we leave the saga, we have all this great, exciting work happening on the television side that informs so much about where we’re going. We want to be very intentional about that. And we have great talent that we’re working with – people who care so deeply about what the next iteration of Star Wars is and about getting people back into movie theatres, so we can really come out with a bang. That’s important to us.”

When asked if there’s hesitancy in moving beyond the Skywalker saga, she says that no, that’s a big part of what comes next: “We need to create a whole new saga. That takes a lot. There’s a lot of conversation around that.”

With Obi-Wan and Andor both on eveyone’s minds, can we expect more prequel era exploration? “That’s exactly what we’re doing with John Favreau and Dave Filoni and Jon Watts, especially Dave’s new show Ahsoka.

“We realize there’s kind of been a pattern of a new generation coming along. All the kids of the kids end up loving the prequels and their parents loved the original movies, and now we have the sequels, not very long ago, there’ll be a whole generation attached to that. It’s always important in Star Wars because it’s one story that we carry forward. That’s the way we look at this.

“It’s a persistent story that goes on and on. And sometimes we can look back and other times we can look forward. And that’s the way we look at it as we talk about what those new projects might be, whether it’s TV, a movie, and eventually a game. So many of the people in the audience, they’re there, now they’re moving from one to the next at Disneyland, in the parks, you want to have that relate to the experiences you’re having on TV or in the movies or so though. It becomes a very broad subject.”

On her comments recently that she believed Solo: A Star Wars Story failed in part because they recast Han, will we ever see characters recast in the saga again?

“Never say never,” she replies.

“It’s certainly not something that we’re doing with any intention right now. We’re still talking about Lando with Donald Glover, for instance, but I don’t think we would intentionally just look back at some of the characters like Luke and Leia and whatnot and decide arbitrarily to do a story. There would have to be a really strong reason why.”

It’s exciting to hear the Landa series is still going ahead as it’s one of our most anticipated Star Wars shows… but what about Han?

“There’s always a future for Solo!” she says.

Does this mean we might see Alden Ehrenreich back as Han – we loved him in the role and the movie as a whole? We certainly hope so!

Marc is a self-confessed nerd. Ever since seeing Star Wars for the first time around 1979 he’s been an unapologetic fan of the Wars and still believes, with Clone Wars and now Underworld, we are yet to see the best Star Wars. He’s a dad of two who now doesn’t have the time (or money) to collect the amount of toys, comics, movies and books he once did, much to the relief of his long-suffering wife. In the real world he’s a graphic designer. He started Following the Nerd because he was tired of searching a million sites every day for all the best news that he loves and decided to create one place where you can go to get the whole lot. Secretly he longs to be sitting in the cockpit of his YT-1300 Corellian Transport ship with his co-pilot Chewie, roaming the universe, waiting for his next big adventure, but feels just at home watching cartoons with his kids….