The Hollywood Reporter and other outlets report Jon Watts (the Spider-Man: Homecoming trilogy, Star Wars: Skeleton Crew) will direct a Star Wars movie. Knight Edge Media, the outlet that broke the story, states Watts will direct the next movie in the primary Skywalker Saga, which writer Simon Kinberg has been purportedly developing since 2024. It would feature the last Jedi herself, Rey Skywalker (Daisy Ridley), in a minor role that would expand in subsequent installments of the new trilogy.
Watts, who directed Spider-Man: Homecoming, Far From Home, and No Way Home (2017-21), created the 2024 Disney+ series Star Wars: Skeleton Crew with Homecoming co-writer Christopher Ford. That show, which took place between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens (Episodes VI and VII), and ultimately ran for only one season, was produced under previous Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy, and Watts’s reported return comes nine months after she was succeeded by current co-presidents Dave Filoni and Lynwen Brennan.
A follow-up to the sequel trilogy (2015-19’s The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi, and The Rise of Skywalker) featuring Rey was announced at Star Wars Celebration in 2023. That movie, which had director Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy (Ms. Marvel) attached, was set to follow Rey rebuilding the New Jedi Order 15 years later, and had a number of screenwriters working in succession on it (including Damon Lindelof), but the film has remained unproduced.
In the meantime, Star Wars returned to theaters earlier this year with The Mandalorian and Grogu, a continuation of the Disney+ series set during the same time period as Skeleton Crew, that became the lowest-grossing live-action Star Wars film to date. The series will return to the big screen again with a rerelease of the original version of the first film (aka Episode IV: A New Hope) in IMAX and regular theaters ahead of its 50th anniversary on February 19, 2027, and with Starfighter on May 28, 2027. Starfighter, incidentally, will take place five years after The Rise of Skywalker.
The status of other films that were in development remains unknown. These include the Filoni-directed feature, also announced at 2023’s Celebration, that was said to act as a conclusion to The Mandalorian, Ahsoka, and other post-ROTJ shows. Ahsoka season two will premiere on Disney+ on January 20, 2027. What this means for the future of any characters from Skeleton Crew remains as clouded as the Force during the leadership of Chancellor Palpatine.
