It’s a well known fact that Disney wants to own all the money ever printed. It’s why they keep producing remakes and sequels of their most popular properties (which have luckily actually been really good). It’s also why they bought over Lucasfilm, the owners of the Star Wars franchise. But it would appear that Lucasfilm don’t quite subscribe to their parent company’s capitalist ways.
The next installment in the Star Wars universe is the first standalone film, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. And it’s definitely about as standalone as you can get, as Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy has revealed to Entertainment Weekly (via /Film) that they will definitely not be making a sequel, which she jokingly refers to as “Rogue Two”.
This rather interesting for the Hollywood studio system, which has lately been obsessed with just building more and more franchises. It’s even more unexpected when you consider the fact that Rogue One despite is set to blow up at the box office after selling out pre-sale tickets in a flash. ILM visual effects pioneer John Knoll, who actually was the one that pitched the story idea behind Rogue One, explained that the movie was always meant to just be a single story.
Rogue One acts as a prequel to Episode IV, telling the previously mentioned tale of how the Death Star plans were originally stolen by the Rebels and ended up in young Princess Leia’s hands. Rogue One director Gareth Edwards added onto Kennedy and Knoll’s statements by revealing that due to it being a direct prequel to the original trilogy, if you wanted a sequel to Rogue One, “that sequel will be directed by George Lucas.”
I’ve always like the idea of the one-off standalone Star Wars story movies. Checking in to other parts of the galaxy and filling in the gaps in the timeline (like, oh I don’t know, telling us what happened with Obi-Wan in his middle years), while the epic main saga of the Skywalker and Solo families play out in the central Episodes. But that appeal only works if these one-offs actually stay one-offs.
Last Updated: November 30, 2016
Andre116
November 30, 2016 at 20:56
Maybe Obi-Wan’s middle years were not that interesting. Maybe he just bought himself a chromed up speeder bike and hit the gym more often and worried about things like receding hairlines.