During the Walt Disney Company quarterly earnings conference call to stockholders, CEO Bob Iger said at least three spin offs are now in development. Originally it was thought to only be two spin offs, but now Iger has confirmed it will be three and they will be released during the next trilogy, starting after Episode VII.
Bob Iger is quoted in the past as saying “There’s been speculation about some standalone films that are in development, and I can confirm to you today that in fact we are working on a few standalone films. Larry Kasdan and Simon Kinberg are both working on films derived from great Star Wars characters that are not part of the overall saga. So we still plan to make Star Wars 7, 8 and 9 roughly over a six-year period of time, starting 2015. But there are going to be a few other films released in that period of time too.”
I’d hazard a guess that Episode VIII will arrive in late 2017 and Episode IX will fly in late 2019. Of course there is also the possibility of moving back to a more traditional Star Wars release date of Summer time, but with such a short period of time between productions, that could be one helluva scramble. It’s incredibly unlikely that the first spin off will arrive in 2016, unless it’s been worked on right now, which it’s not. So best guess is that we’ll see the first spin off in 2018 and then 2020 with the third one arriving two years later? The idea of two spin offs would sit well with an overall release strategy, but this final third movie just seems to be way out there.
As for what characters they are based on? Boba Fett is the obvious one, and baring in mind that these offshoots are centred on characters not in the new trilogy your guess is as good as mine as to who else could feature? Jabba? Lando? Yoda? But if you look at those characters, two of them are dead and Lando is pushing on a bit. So could these spin offs be character prequels? Either way, we’ll need to use more than the force to figure this out!
Thoughts?
