Maybe we should have seen this coming. The 50th anniversary of Star Wars—of Star Wars, technically, from way back when A New Hope had that title—is a mere two years away. So that’s when we’re getting the next new Star Wars movie after 2026’s The Mandalorian & Grogu.
Lucasfilm announced, last night at Star Wars Celebration, that director Shawn Levy’s Star Wars: Starfighter will swoop into theaters on May 28, 2027.
(A New Hope was May 25, 1977, but one cannot force Fridays to land where one wants them to for perfect synchronicity.)
According to Variety, novelist and screenwriter Jonathan Tropper has written the film’s screenplay. Tropper collaborated with Levy before, on The Adam Project, and also recently sign on to another franchise: the Matchbox cars movie.
Very little is known about Starfighter other than that it stars Ryan Gosling, and is set five years after The Rise of Skywalker. That reference, though, doesn’t mean it connects to that unfortunate film. Supposedly, Starfighter will be the first new-character-starring, non-sequel, non-prequel, non-tied-to-a-TV-show Star Wars film we’ve seen since the first one. At Celebration, Levy said the film “is a new adventure. It’s new characters, and takes place in a new period of time after the Battle of Exegol and after Episode 9.”
It’s a big old galaxy. Let’s hope Levy, Gosling, and pals have a good idea how to explore it.