with The Force Awakens, Disney launches an ambitious film slate that plans to put a new Star Wars film in theaters every year for at least the next six years. Disney’s level of preproduction is just insane. Right now, the plan is to have a new Episode every other year, with anthology films in between to stop fans from ripping each other apart in anticipation. All the films have directors locked down, with Disney recruiting a wide assortment of talented people to make their mark on the galaxy far, far away. J.J. Abrams is of course directing The Force Awakens, which is beyond perfect. Disney needed someone who could both pay homage to what came before, while also crafting something entirely new. Abrams has proven he’s the master at this thanks to his rebooted Star Trek series and his throwback Super 8 film. They also needed someone who could handle the millions of prying eyes that would
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ask questions about the film, and Abrams is famously tight-lipped when it comes to his projects. Seriously, it’s amazing how much Abrams was able to keep this project under wraps. Take Disney’s other massive franchise, The Avengers. Leading up to the second film, Avengers: Age of Ultron, it seemed like new spoilers were leaking left and right. By the time the movie was released, almost every hardcore fan had already pieced together the entire movie. The complete opposite is true for The Force Awakens. Even though this is one of the most anticipated movies in years, we still don’t know exactly what the plot of this film is beyond the Sith are back and they seem pissed. It was a brilliant move picking Abrams because it doesn’t matter how little they tell audiences about the plot of the movie, everyone and their grandmother is still going to see it. After The Force Awakens, things are going to start moving really fast. Next
year brings Gareth Edwards’ (Godzilla) anthology film Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. It will tell the tale of the Rebel Alliance stealing the original Death Star plans that revealed its key weakness (as in, it showed how there was a small thermal exhaust port that blew up the ENTIRE thing if a laser was shot into it). The year after that, Rian Johnson (Looper, Brick) will take the reins from J.J. Abrams and write/direct Episode 8. Following that, Phil Lord and Chris Miller (21 Jump Street) will direct the next anthology film, the Han Solo origin story. After that, Colin Trevorrow ( Jurassic World) will direct Episode 9. The anthology film after that is rumored to be a Boba Fett origin story, and it did have Chronicle director Josh Trank at the helm, but after the disaster of his Fantastic Four film, Disney quickly fired him. Regardless, that’s an incredible amount of Star Wars films in a very short amount of time. The amazing thing is that our