The Star Wars crawl is coming back, says Kathleen Kennedy
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Star Wars fans were treated to an onslaught of casting reveals and trailer drops for the franchise's upcoming streaming shows at Star Wars Celebration in London over the weekend. Actors were announced, and footage was shown for series like Ahsoka, Skeleton Crew, and The Acolyte. But the biggest scoop to come out of the April 7 Lucasfilm studio panel was the announcement of three new Star Wars feature films.
Director James Mangold (who also was at Celebration to showcase his upcoming Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny) will helm a movie set 25,000 years before A New Hope that will tell the tale of the very first Jedi to ever wield the Force. Dave Filoni will direct a feature set in the same post–Return of the Jedi timeline as The Mandalorian, Ahsoka, and Skeleton Crew. And Ms. Marvel director Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy will make a film set 15 years after The Rise of Skywalker centered on Daisy Ridley's Rey running a Jedi academy and rebuilding a New Jedi Order.
Kate Green/Lucasfilm Ltd. Daisy Ridley makes a surprise appearance at Star Wars Celebration 2023 to announce a new Rey movie set 15 years after 'The Rise of Skywalker'
While no timeline was given for when these films might hit the big screen, they will be the first Star Wars movies since 2019's The Rise of Skywalker. And when Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy spoke to EW at the convention, she revealed that they will also mark the return of something else: the Star Wars opening crawl.
Previously, the yellow floating-in-space opening text crawl was used only for the nine Skywalker saga films: the original trilogy, the prequel trilogy, and the sequel trilogy. It was not used on the other one-off films Rogue One and Solo. When we asked if it would be returning for the Rey film since the character became an adopted Skywalker, Kennedy did not hesitate with her response. "The crawl's coming back," she tells EW.
But what she said next is even more interesting. When asked if the crawl would be returning only for the Rey film, Kennedy was equally direct. "No. The crawl is for movies."
So, while the upcoming Disney+ series will all remain crawl-free, Star Wars movies — whether they are focused on the Skywalker lineage or not — will now all begin with a crawl to help differentiate them from their small-screen cousins.
That's not all Kennedy said about the films. She also expanded on the reasoning for bringing Ridley back for another round of Rey.
Says Kennedy: "As we move into the future space — this story is about 15 years outside of The Rise of Skywalker — obviously we realized post-war, post–First Order rise of the New Jedi Order, we left episode 9 with Ray making a commitment to Luke Skywalker that she would rebuild the Jedi order. And so here we are — we're ready to do that. And it took a lot of discussion because obviously we've been developing stories in different spaces, and television has been a big focus of our attention right now. But there's still so much interest in what happens after The Rise of Skywalker. So we're excited to be doing that."
As for whether some of Rey's prequel-trilogy friends will join her? Kennedy smiles and gives a knowing laugh. "It's entirely possible to see some people come back."
Lucasfilm Ltd. Daisy Ridley as Rey in 'Star Wars: The Last Jedi'
Addressing the Mangold-directed project, Kennedy says, "We've been talking a lot about going well into the past, and one of the things that's really knitting this all together, obviously, are the Jedi. What happened with the Jedi over time? How did the Jedi evolve? They were wiped out with Order 66. Then they gradually have been coming back."
According to Kennedy, the themes in the past will also link to those in the future: "The question we're going to ask with the New Jedi Order and Rey is, does the galaxy need them anymore? Do they want them back? So there's a lot of food for thought in what we're doing, whether it's in the past, present, or future."
The third film, from Filoni, seems to be an Avengers-style meetup of characters from The Mandalorian, The Book of Boba Fett, Ahsoka, and Skeleton Crew, but Kennedy hints that it may be more than that.
"I hesitate to say it's a big meetup from just those [series]," says the Lucasfilm president, "because Dave has been developing Star Wars storytelling inside Clone Wars and Rebels and so much of the work he has done for 20 years. So it will be little bits of all of that. There are a lot of sources he's drawing from to see where we're going."
But wherever we're going, it will begin with a crawl.
For exclusive interviews with the cast and producers of The Mandalorian, Andor, Ahsoka and more, listen to EW's Dagobah Dispatch podcast.
