What is Disney’s plan for the Star Wars sequel?
The film which was to mark the return of Daisy Ridley as Rey Skywalker, in 2026, has just been removed from the calendar and we no longer understand anything about Lucasfilm’s plan.
Is Disney getting lost in the Galaxy far, far away? In any case, the studio’s plans for its enormous franchise are increasingly difficult to read. A few days after the announcement of the new trilogy by Simon Kinberg (X-Men), we discover that the film Star Wars scheduled for December 18, 2026 has been removed from the official calendar. In short, the one we’ve been calling for a year Star Wars: New Jedi Order (unofficial title), and which was to mark the return of Daisy Ridley in Rey Skywalker, is no longer on the program. It is Ice Age 6 which will take this slot during the 2026 end-of-year holidays.
So what does this decision mean? What should we understand? We attempt decryption.
First of all, the fact that it is no longer dated on the Disney calendar does not mean that it has been deleted. Potentially, the project entrusted to the director Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoyhas perhaps only been postponed. According to the latest news, Daisy Ridley was really excited by the idea and confided to Première: “If I didn’t think the story was worth telling, I wouldn’t have come back (…) I could have refused. I was simply asked if I wanted to do it, based on an idea, without the script being written yet. And if I hadn’t been convinced by the concept, the film wouldn’t have seen the light of day..” The concept was to find Rey as she builds a new Jedi order.
This potential Episode Star Warssupposed to be the direct sequel to theEpisode IX: The Rise of Skywalker (2019), however, lost its screenwriter at the start of the year. Steven Knight (after Damon Lindelof and Justin Britt-Gibson) has jumped ship and it could be that Lucasfilm just needs time to restart writing the script. Unless Kathleen Kennedy have another idea in mind.
And for good reason, the surprise announcement of the start of work on a fourth trilogy by Simon Kinberg might not be a simple coincidence. After launching a multitude of tracks which ended up making pshiiit one after the other (the film Star Wars by Patty Jenkins, the film Star Wars by Kevin Feige, the film Star Wars creators of Game of Thronesthe film Star Wars of Rian Johnson’s comeback…), Lucasfilm might want to go back to basics: a good old trilogy for a new decade.
The whole question now is whether Rey Skywalker is still in the plans. It is entirely possible that the film Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy be integrated into the trilogy of Simon Kinberg. The latter would therefore take over the scenario, to better integrate it into its long-term story. But again, we can only assume. We are waiting for Disney to make official announcements to clarify this increasingly illegible blur in the Galaxy.
Only one thing seems decided today: the next film Star Wars will be The Mandalorian and Grogudirected by Jon Favreau and which will be released in May 2026.