Jon Favreau’s Star Wars toekomst (en aankondiging regisseur in 2020?)

Terwijl The Mandalorian hoge ogen scoort op Disney+ en ver iets minder dan een maand The Rise of Skywalker in de bioscoop verschijnt gonst het al van de geruchten over de verdere toekomst van de franchise.

Eerder dit jaar werd aangekondigd dat er in 2022 een film zou verschijnen maar aangezien onlangs de schrijvers (Benioff en Weiss) vertrokken leek dit even op losse schroeven te staan.

Website The Hollywood Reporter weet nu dit te melden:

Sources say (Kathleen) Kennedy has a film on deck for 2022, but not the one being developed by The Last Jedi filmmaker Rian Johnson. (No announcement is planned until January.) Kennedy’s contract is up in 2021, so whether she will be on the job when this film is completed is not clear. Kennedy insists she’s enjoyed running Lucasfilm, but in some ways it’s hard to see how. She has had one of the hardest jobs in Hollywood: inventing stories under a white-hot spotlight and dealing in a universe where rabid fans have plenty of ideas, mostly about what they don’t want. And she was picked by Lucas before he sold to Disney, not Iger. It’s not hard to imagine that Iger would like to install his own choice to head this bauble that cost $4 billion and has generated some headaches since. It’s also not hard to imagine that Iger has not enjoyed the negative noise around the franchise, despite the nearly $5 billion in global box office from Disney’s four installments since 2015.

In januari wellicht meer nieuws?

Aangezien haar contract in 2021 afloopt wordt er over de eventuele opvolging van Kennedy ook al gespeculeerd:

Creating a new mythology is, of course, the challenge that Disney faces with Star Wars. Kennedy is an experienced and competent producer, but she is not a creative visionary. (She made her name as a producer for creative visionary Steven Spielberg.) So who better than Favreau to play a leading role in charting the course? He has fan loyalty. He is as Team Disney as they come, having directed The Jungle Book and The Lion King. He worked with Kennedy on the all-important effort to launch Disney+. And having consulted on, executive produced and acted in Marvel movies, he is also close with Feige.

So with or without Kennedy, sources say it seems likely that Favreau will have a lot of say over the future of Star Wars. These sources also say Kennedy’s ideal team includes key roles for Michelle Rejwan, a producer on Episode IX and Lucasfilm’s senior vp live action development and production, and Dave Filoni, the veteran animation director and George Lucas protege who directed live action for the first time with two episodes of Mandalorian. Even if remaining at Lucasfilm is not in the cards for Kennedy, this plan would enable her to trumpet that she has done the job she was hired to do — completing the Skywalker saga — and left the franchise in good hands.

Gezien de huidige populariteit van Favreau’s The Mandalorian (een serie die door een groot deel van de fanbase al de beste Star Wars productie sinds de overname door Disney wordt genoemd) is dit niet eens zo’n gek plan. De toevoeging van Lucas’ leerling Dave Filoni lijkt ook een logische keuze.

Voorlopig blijft het gissen, immers: “Always in motion, the future is”.

Foto credit: Jon Favreau
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