Disney spent the past year preparing Star Wars fans for a reset, and that new direction grows clearer with every announcement out of Lucasfilm. The franchise stayed away from movie theaters for years, relying on a steady run of Disney+ shows after the Skywalker saga wrapped in 2019. In January this year, Disney handed Lucasfilm to a new creative chief and President, a clear indication that the galaxy far, far away wants a different course. Fans are only starting to learn what that course looks like.
The biggest sign of this reset arrives in 2027 with Star Wars: Starfighter, the Ryan Gosling movie that gives the franchise its first original big-screen story with all-new characters since Disney bought Lucasfilm. Dave Filoni, who took over as president and chief creative officer, now has the keys to a studio rethinking the very approach that defined its streaming years. This push toward fresh stories raises an important question for longtime fans: will the legacy-driven Mandoverse still fit Disney’s plans after The Mandalorian and Grogu stumbled in theaters? The answer will have an impact on Star Wars for the next decade.
Star Wars: Starfighter Starts a Big Screen Reset
Star Wars: Starfighter hits theaters on May 28, 2027, with Ryan Gosling in the lead and Shawn Levy directing from a script by Jonathan Tropper. The story takes place roughly five years after the events of The Rise of Skywalker, and it follows brand-new characters with no direct link to the films that came before. That makes it the first Star Wars movie of the Disney era to tell a fully original story. Every Star Wars film since the studio’s 2012 purchase leaned on the past in some way. The sequel trilogy closed out the Skywalker saga, while Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and Solo: A Star Wars Story filled in gaps around characters fans already knew.
Director Shawn Levy says the studio gave him a single piece of direction, and it points straight at this reset we’re talking about here. Levy told The Business podcast that the only note he ever got from Lucasfilm was a mandate to “make this new”:
“There is no mandate or interference other than the constant encouragement, ‘Make this new.’ And that’s the truth. Every time I’ve asked, ‘Should I use this character that was maybe in that movie?’ Every time it’s, ‘You know what? People have seen that. Do something new.'”
Levy compared the freedom on Starfighter to his original movies, the ones with no franchise history behind them. Lucasfilm steered him away from familiar faces at every turn. Aside from Gosling, the film includes Mia Goth, Aaron Pierre, Matt Smith, and Amy Adams.
Dave Filoni Will Steer Star Wars Toward New Stories
The reset runs deeper than one movie. In January, Kathleen Kennedy stepped down as Lucasfilm president after nearly 14 years, returning to producing, where she still oversaw The Mandalorian and Grogu, and will do the same for Starfighter. Dave Filoni took the top creative job as president and chief creative officer, while Lynwen Brennan came aboard as co-president to run the business side. The split mirrors the setup at DC Studios, where James Gunn handles creative decisions, and Peter Safran runs the business.
Filoni knows this universe as well as anyone alive. He came up through animation, directing the 2008 film Star Wars: The Clone Wars before guiding its long-running series, creating the fan-favorite Ahsoka Tano, and helping launch The Mandalorian alongside Jon Favreau.
His shows attracted younger viewers toward Star Wars in a way few projects managed.Filoni obviously has big plans for Star Wars. This was made evident with the recent Maul – Shadow Lord series, which many fans have praised as one of the best Star Wars projects in recent years.
Disney has reason to rethink its old playbook, and Filoni will help do that. The Mandalorian and Grogu reached theaters on May 22, the first big-screen Star Wars in seven years, yet it never found the massive audience the franchise once commanded. It opened to about $81 million at the domestic box office and around $163 million worldwide over Memorial Day weekend, then dropped close to 70% in its second weekend.
The numbers are enough reason to believe a reset is in order. For years, Filoni and Favreau revived deep-cut legacy characters on Disney+, and fans rewarded them with record streaming demand. That same style, full of masked bounty hunters and obscure cameos, never turned into a must-see night at the movies.
Younger crowds, the ones now filling theaters, mostly skipped The Mandalorian and Grogu, with under-25 viewers making up just 27% of its opening audience. The horror hit Backrooms pulled a far younger crowd with a nearly identical debut. So the move toward original stories is a necessity to bring Gen Z back into the Star Wars corner.
These numbers also throw the future of the Mandoverse into question. A Filoni-directed Mandoverse movie, one meant to bring together the Mandalorian, Ahsoka, and Grand Admiral Thrawn, still has no release date and an unclear status. Ahsoka returns for a second season in early 2027, so the world Filoni shaped is not going anywhere yet, though its road to the big screen looks far less certain than it did a year ago.
What Movies Will Follow After Starfighter?
After Starfighter, the big-screen plan gets murky. Kennedy hinted on her way out that a trilogy from writer-producer Simon Kinberg is closest to the finish line among a long list of announced but unmade Star Wars films. Reports peg those movies as Episodes X, XI, and XII, which would extend the main saga past The Rise of Skywalker. The project would reunite Filoni with Kinberg, his co-creator on the animated series Rebels. Other announced films, including efforts from James Mangold and Taika Waititi, remain question marks.
The direction points one way, toward original stories set after the Skywalkers. Starfighter begins roughly five years past The Rise of Skywalker, and if the Kinberg films become Episodes X through XII, Disney would move the timeline forward rather than mine the past. That would be a proper change for Lucasfilm, who have been heavily reliant on nostalgia in recent years.
This is not to say Disney is wiping the slate clean, though. Ahsoka Season 2, a renewed second season of the animated Maul – Shadow Lord, and a planned re-release of the original 1977 film keep the familiar corners of the galaxy in play. The reset will blend bold new ideas with the stories fans already love, and Starfighter will be the first real test of whether this balance will work and save the galaxy far, far away.
