• Lucasfilm confirmed in a GameRant interview that Cal Kestis will appear in future Star Wars stories
• The confirmation comes alongside news that a third Star Wars Jedi game is in development
• Actor Cameron Monaghan (Gotham, TRON: Ares) voices and motion-captures Cal, and is widely expected to reprise the role in live-action
• No specific project has been announced — the confirmation is deliberately vague
• Fans are connecting the dots between the Lucasfilm confirmation and a new Luke Skywalker book that fueled fresh theories

Cal Kestis isn’t going anywhere — and Disney wants you to know it.

Lucasfilm representatives confirmed in a recent interview with GameRant that the Star Wars Jedi video game protagonist will feature in future stories beyond the game series. It’s the clearest official signal yet that the character — an Order 66 survivor introduced in Fallen Order and continued in Survivor — has a place in the broader Star Wars universe that extends beyond a controller.

The catch: no specific project was named. It’s a confirmation in the loosest sense — a door held open rather than a door walked through.

The Cameron Monaghan Question

Speculation has swirled for years that Cameron Monaghan, who voices and motion-captures Cal in both games, would eventually reprise the role in live-action. Monaghan has the profile for it — Gotham fans know him well, and his upcoming appearance in TRON: Ares will only raise his visibility. ComicBook noted that the Lucasfilm confirmation, combined with a new Luke Skywalker book generating fan theories, has the internet doing what it does: connecting dots and running with it.

What’s Next for the Games

A third Star Wars Jedi game from Respawn is in development, though details remain sparse. The Lucasfilm statement suggests that whatever comes after that game — TV, film, animation — Cal’s story is part of the longer plan.

For fans who’ve spent two games investing in this character, that’s enough for now.

The post Disney Confirms Cal Kestis Is Coming Back — Live-Action Still Up in the Air appeared first on Cream.

• Damon Lindelof was fired from a Star Wars movie in 2023 after two years of development with co-writers Justin Britt-Gibson and Rayna McClendon
• His script would have centered on Daisy Ridley’s Rey and explored the franchise’s war between nostalgia and reinvention — what he called “the Protestant Reformation inside Star Wars”
• Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight was hired to replace Lindelof and Britt-Gibson, but that version also stalled
• Lindelof says the writing was genuinely hard — nailing the tone, the canon placement, and the relationship to Episode IX all proved elusive
• His comments land the same week The Mandalorian and Grogu opens in theaters, the first Star Wars film since 2019

Damon Lindelof just said out loud what a lot of Star Wars fans have been whispering for years — and he did it by describing his own firing.

The creator of Lost, The Leftovers, and HBO’s Watchmen appeared on The Ringer-Verse’s House of R podcast this week and decided to address what he called “the Bantha in the room”: the fact that he was fired off a Star Wars movie. He didn’t hedge. He didn’t spin it. He just told the story.

“They asked me, ‘What do you think a Star Wars movie should be?’ And I said, ‘Here’s what it should be.’ And they said, ‘Great, you’re hired.’ And then two years later, I was fired,” Lindelof said. “And so I was wrong. At least through that prism.”

The project was first announced in 2022, with Lindelof and co-writer Justin Britt-Gibson developing what would eventually be revealed as a Rey-centric New Jedi Order story — set after the events of The Rise of Skywalker, with Daisy Ridley returning as Rey as she attempts to rebuild the Jedi Order. Director Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy was attached to helm it. By 2023, Lindelof and Britt-Gibson were out, replaced by Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight. That version has since stalled too.

What the Movie Would Have Actually Been About

Here’s where it gets interesting. Lindelof wasn’t just writing a Rey sequel. He was trying to make a film that directly engaged with the fractured state of the Star Wars fanbase itself — without ever breaking the fourth wall to wink at the audience.

“What we were attempting to do — my partners Justin Britt-Gibson and Rayna McClendon and I — was to have this conversation in the movie,” he explained. “Which is to say, there is a Force of nostalgia and there is a Force of revision, and they are at odds with one another. And let’s do the Protestant Reformation inside Star Wars.”

He paused on that, then added: “And it didn’t work.”

It’s a genuinely ambitious idea. The tension between nostalgia and reinvention has been the defining fault line of Star Wars since The Force Awakens — the franchise simultaneously trying to honor the past and build something new, and never quite committing to either. The Last Jedi pushed hard toward revision. The Rise of Skywalker yanked back toward nostalgia. The fandom split accordingly. Lindelof wanted to make that conflict the actual architecture of a movie, not just the subtext.

One intriguing detail that surfaced: Lindelof’s original pitch was apparently set decades after The Rise of Skywalker, and he’d even floated the idea of Helen Mirren playing an older Rey — a version of the character far removed from where Daisy Ridley left her. It’s a bold swing that would have sidestepped the announced story entirely, which may partly explain why the project became such a slow-moving puzzle.

Why the Writing Stalled

Lindelof is clear that the premise wasn’t the problem. Lucasfilm liked it. The problem was execution — and the sheer gravitational weight of the Star Wars universe.

“The writing was really hard. It was slow,” he said. “The tone, getting it right, where it was inside the canon, what its relationship was to Episode IX — is it starting a new trilogy? All of those things. They’re so massive. They’re so big. It’s sort of the tanker equation, which is you turn the wheel and it takes five minutes before it turns a little bit.”

He’s describing something any writer who’s ever tried to work inside a massive franchise will recognize: the script isn’t just a script, it’s also a position statement on everything that came before it. Every scene carries institutional weight. Every choice about tone or timeline or canon ripples outward in ways that are almost impossible to fully anticipate until you’re deep in the work.

And underneath all of it was a more fundamental question that nobody had quite answered yet.

“We’re looking for the center of Star Wars,” Lindelof said. “When Episode VII came out, we all knew what it was. It was Rey and it was Finn and it was Poe, and then we were migrating back in — Luke and Leia and Han and Chewie and all those guys. But we got the sense that when this new trilogy was over, we were going to be launching with these new characters, and that was the center of Star Wars. The new question is: are Mando and Grogu the center of Star Wars now?”

A Franchise Still Looking for Its Footing

That question hangs over everything right now. The Mandalorian and Grogu — the franchise’s first theatrical release in six years — opened May 22, and early reviews have been mixed at best. IGN called it a 5/10, writing that it’s not “a Star Wars movie that thrills, surprises, challenges, or demonstrates a vested interest in seeing its characters grow and change.” The film exists, in part, because so many of the more ambitious projects — Lindelof’s among them, but also a Rian Johnson trilogy, a film from Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, a Kevin Feige-produced Star Wars movie, James Mangold’s Dawn of the Jedi — never made it out of development.

The Rey movie announced at Star Wars Celebration 2023 with Ridley and Obaid-Chinoy on stage is still technically alive, but new Lucasfilm president Dave Filoni has been quiet about its status. Knight’s replacement script has reportedly hit its own walls. And Kathleen Kennedy, who championed the project publicly, has since stepped down. Meanwhile, a new trilogy from Simon Kinberg is apparently in early development alongside everything else.

Lindelof, for his part, has plenty to keep him busy. His DC series Lanterns is heading to HBO later this year, and he remains one of the most compelling voices in prestige genre television. But it’s hard to listen to him describe what his Star Wars movie could have been — a film that put the franchise’s own identity crisis on screen and tried to work through it — and not feel like something genuinely interesting slipped through the cracks.

“The conversation that the fandom is having, without winking and looking at the audience,” he said. “That didn’t feel necessarily that risky.”

Maybe it wasn’t. But it also never got made.

The post Damon Lindelof on Being Fired From Star Wars appeared first on Cream.

• The Mandalorian and Grogu is projected to earn $80–100M domestically over Memorial Day weekend — in line with the disastrous Solo opening
• Critics have largely panned the film, with outlets calling it “drab,” “lifeless,” and asking someone to “put Star Wars out of its misery”
• Industry analysts say Star Wars is failing to connect with younger moviegoers the way it did with older generations
• The film’s $165M budget is the leanest Star Wars production since Revenge of the Sith, lowering the bar for profitability
• Eyes are already turning to 2027’s Star Wars: Starfighter, starring Ryan Gosling and directed by Shawn Levy, as the franchise’s real reset

The Mandalorian and Grogu arrives in theaters on May 22 carrying the full weight of a franchise in crisis — and the reviews aren’t helping.

When the critic embargo lifted Tuesday morning, the headlines were brutal. The Independent’s piece was headlined “Stick a fork in Star Wars. It’s done.” The Times of London asked, “Would someone please put Star Wars out of its misery?” Vulture called it “drab and stone-faced to a fault” with “lifeless performances that seem determined to lull us to sleep.” Even the more charitable takes weren’t exactly rallying cries — the New York Post’s Johnny Oleksinski called it “an elongated and beefed-up episode of television” that’s “likable enough,” while Variety’s Owen Gleiberman settled on “nothing more (or less) than a couple of likable, diverting, semi-forgettable episodes jammed together.” IGN gave it a 5/10, writing that if you’re “looking for a Star Wars movie that thrills, surprises, challenges, or demonstrates a vested interest in seeing its characters grow and change… The Mandalorian and Grogu is not the way.”

That’s not what Disney needed to hear.

Box office tracking puts the film at $80–100 million domestically over the four-day Memorial Day holiday weekend. For almost any other franchise, that’s a respectable number. For Star Wars — one of Hollywood’s most mythologized properties — it’s a stress test. Comscore analyst Paul Dergarabedian put it plainly: “It will be a stress test for the ‘Star Wars’ brand.”

The uncomfortable comparison is 2018’s Solo: A Star Wars Story, which opened to $84 million over the same holiday weekend and ultimately became the first Star Wars film to lose money in theaters, finishing with $392 million globally against a nearly $300 million budget. The Mandalorian and Grogu has a far leaner $165 million production budget — the cheapest Star Wars film since Revenge of the Sith in 2005 — which meaningfully lowers the break-even point. But the optics of matching Solo’s opening number are hard to spin.

A Generation That Grew Up Without Star Wars in Theaters

The film is the first Star Wars theatrical release in six and a half years, since The Rise of Skywalker divided audiences and critics alike in December 2019. That gap means there’s a whole cohort of young kids who have never experienced a Star Wars movie opening weekend — which director Jon Favreau has said is very much on his mind. “I want to make the next generation feel the way about Star Wars that I did when I saw it for the first time,” he told the Associated Press.

It’s a noble goal. But industry analysts aren’t sure the current moment is the one that delivers it.

“There’s clearly interest in the brand,” said Eric Handler, senior media analyst at Roth Capital Partners. “But revenues for each film have gotten progressively lower. Star Wars isn’t resonating with younger moviegoers like it did for [older] generations.”

The numbers back him up. The Force Awakens, which relaunched the franchise in 2015, earned over $2 billion globally and remains the highest-grossing domestic release of all time at $936 million. The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker were both billion-dollar films — but each earned roughly half of what their predecessor did. The only post-Disney spinoff that truly worked was Rogue One, which crossed $1 billion in 2016. Since then, it’s been a slow bleed.

The challenge Favreau and Lucasfilm co-CEO Dave Filoni face with this film is a specific one: convincing the show’s streaming audience to actually get off the couch and buy a movie ticket. The Mandalorian was a genuine phenomenon when it launched on Disney+ in 2019 — Baby Yoda broke the internet, became a meme ecosystem unto itself, and turned Grogu into one of the most recognizable characters in pop culture. But streaming audiences and theatrical audiences don’t always overlap. Marvel has run into the same wall: last year’s Captain America: Brave New World and Thunderbolts, both preceded by Disney+ series, underperformed at the box office despite built-in fan bases.

“The biggest challenge is whether the streaming audience converts into a theatrical audience,” said Shawn Robbins, Fandango’s director of movie analytics and founder of Box Office Theory. “If word of mouth is good, that’ll be the big X factor.”

There’s also the small matter of the show’s declining quality in its later seasons — ratings and reviews dipped noticeably by Season 3 of The Mandalorian, giving casual fans less incentive to stay invested heading into a theatrical continuation.

Grogu Merch Is Everywhere. Ticket Sales Are the Question.

What’s not in doubt is Grogu’s commercial appeal off-screen. The little green guy’s face is currently stamped on Bath & Body Works soaps, Nilla Wafers’ “Grogu Nilla Nummies,” Pop Mart blind boxes, and a line of green Schick razors, among other collaborations. As Robbins put it: “Grogu is going to be a merchandising monster.”

That’s the broader Star Wars reality — the franchise is a sprawling ecosystem of theme park attractions, toys, and licensing deals that generates enormous revenue regardless of whether any individual film hits. Analysts are quick to point out that box office performance, while important for optics, is only one corner of that universe.

Still, the marketing campaign for the film reportedly raised some internal eyebrows. One source told Page Six that a member of the marketing team expressed concern they hadn’t had enough time to screen the film and properly build a campaign around it. Promotion, the source noted, basically boiled down to: “Look how adorable Grogu is!” — which may explain why, in a recent Fandango survey asking thousands of moviegoers to name their top 10 most anticipated films of the summer, The Mandalorian and Grogu didn’t make the list.

All Eyes on Starfighter

Inside Lucasfilm and among box office watchers, there’s a growing sense that the franchise’s real shot at revival isn’t this movie — it’s next summer’s Star Wars: Starfighter.

Directed by Shawn Levy, who brought enormous energy to Deadpool & Wolverine, and starring Ryan Gosling fresh off the success of Project Hail Mary, Starfighter is a standalone film set after the events of The Rise of Skywalker in a time period the franchise hasn’t explored yet. Levy has been emphatic that it’s a clean break. “It’s a new adventure,” he said at Star Wars Celebration 2025. “It’s set in a period of time that we haven’t seen explored yet.” No legacy characters, no Skywalker baggage, no sequel obligations.

Handler sees it clearly: “Disney needs something new and exciting to bring energy to the franchise. Ryan Gosling is as hot as can be right now. ‘Starfighter’ could be the way to go.”

For now, though, the focus is on this weekend. Dergarabedian is watching the second-week drop closely — a 55% decline would signal genuine audience engagement; a 70% freefall would tell a different story entirely. “There’s been just this feeling of disappointment and almost… not anger. But just very critical of the creative direction that Star Wars has taken over the past few years,” he said.

This is also, notably, the first major theatrical release in the post-Kathleen Kennedy era. Kennedy, who ran Lucasfilm for over two decades, stepped down earlier this year, with Filoni and Lynwen Brennan now at the helm. They have yet to reveal a broader roadmap for the franchise, though that could change at D23 in August or at next April’s Star Wars Celebration.

The Mandalorian and Grogu opens May 22. Star Wars: Starfighter is currently set for May 28, 2027.

The post Star Wars Is Losing Younger Fans — Can It Survive? appeared first on Cream.

• Dave Filoni, newly named Lucasfilm president, is prioritizing story quality over release quotas for Star Wars
• The Mandalorian and Grogu opens May 22 — the franchise’s first theatrical film since 2019’s The Rise of Skywalker
• Star Wars: Starfighter starring Ryan Gosling follows in May 2027, with Ahsoka Season 2 also due that year
• A Simon Kinberg trilogy rumored to become Episodes X, XI, and XII is among the projects believed to still be in motion
• Filoni says fans have known him for 20 years and should have a good sense of what to expect under his leadership

Dave Filoni has been telling Star Wars stories for two decades. Now he’s in charge of them. And with The Mandalorian and Grogu arriving in theaters on May 22 — the franchise’s first big-screen outing since The Rise of Skywalker landed to mixed reviews back in 2019 — the newly minted Lucasfilm president is finally starting to sketch out what the galaxy far, far away looks like under his watch.

In a new interview with Collider, Filoni was asked directly about how many films and shows he envisions putting out each year. His answer was characteristically measured — but there was real substance underneath it.

“For me right now, rather than dealing with hard numbers like that, I’m just looking at the stories and the potential and planning what I’d like to do,” Filoni said. “I believe in having an overarching idea and then saying, ‘Okay, it’s this many of that, and then we can have that.’ There are certain things that have been in motion already that, obviously, I want to continue. Jon [Favreau] and I have had a great partnership for many years now, telling stories. So, I look at the stories that I’m kind of planning and architecting, and I look at other creative talents that bring us, also, great stories, and I just try to find a way to make them all work.”

It’s a pointed contrast to how things operated during the Disney era’s most chaotic stretch, when Star Wars films were hitting theaters annually from 2015 through 2019 — a pace that ultimately burned out audiences and left a trail of cancelled projects in its wake. For every film that made it to screens, several more quietly died in development. Filoni’s philosophy seems to be: fewer promises, better stories.

What’s Actually Coming — and When

The Mandalorian and Grogu, which Filoni co-wrote and produced alongside director Jon Favreau, is the first piece of that puzzle. After that, Ahsoka Season 2 is set for early 2027 on Disney+, followed in May 2027 by Star Wars: Starfighter — a standalone film directed by Shawn Levy with a stacked ensemble that includes Ryan Gosling, Aaron Pierre, Amy Adams, Mia Goth, and Matt Smith. Filoni was effusive about that one: “Shawn Levy did a great job with Starfighter. So there’s a lot.”

On the animation side, Maul – Shadow Lord — which Filoni wrote and created — just wrapped its first season on Disney+ and has already been renewed for Season 2. Voice actor Sam Witwer has confirmed the team had been working on that second season for some time. “There’s a lot on my plate which is exciting, not just in live-action but animation, like Maul, which has been very fun, and they’re driving forward,” Filoni said.

He also teased a re-release of Episode IV: A New Hope as part of the broader celebration ahead. “And the re-release of Episode IV. There’s so much exciting stuff coming for Star Wars fans.”

The Bigger Picture: Sequels, Trilogies, and Loose Threads

When Filoni says “there are certain things that have been in motion already that I want to continue,” the fan community has plenty of material to read into. A trilogy conceived by Simon Kinberg is widely rumored to become Episodes X, XI, and XII, and may incorporate the Rey Skywalker sequel that director Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy had been developing. James Mangold’s “Dawn of the Jedi” origin film, Taika Waititi’s long-gestating project, and a Lando Calrissian spin-off from Donald Glover are all still technically on the table — though their statuses remain genuinely unclear.

What reads loudest in Filoni’s quote, though, is the Favreau partnership. The two have built the modern era of Star Wars storytelling together — from The Mandalorian‘s breakout debut through The Book of Boba Fett and beyond. The suggestion that their collaborative work will continue strongly implies the Mando and Grogu story isn’t ending with this film.

Filoni himself was previously announced as the director of an untitled film that would tie together the events of The Mandalorian, Ahsoka, and The Book of Boba Fett — essentially a theatrical culmination of the interconnected Mandalorian-verse saga he’s been building for years. With Ahsoka Season 2 still in production, the timeline for that project remains open.

Filoni Isn’t Going Anywhere Creatively

One thing he was unambiguous about: taking the president title doesn’t mean stepping back from the actual work. Between Maul – Shadow Lord, Ahsoka Season 2, and overseeing productions like Starfighter, Filoni is still very much in the trenches as a creator.

“Fans have known me now for 20 years and that I’ve worked with and told Star Wars stories, so I think they have a good idea of what to expect,” he said. “I’ve so far really enjoyed collaborating with everybody, and we are well on our way. The future’s in motion now, so it’s exciting.”

The man who gave the world Ahsoka Tano — now one of the most beloved characters in the entire franchise — is now the one holding the keys to all of it. The clearest next signal of where things are headed will likely come at D23 Expo in August, or at Star Wars Celebration in April 2027. But for now, the galaxy has a new architect. And he sounds like he knows exactly what he wants to build.

The post Dave Filoni Lays Out His Vision for Star Wars’ Future appeared first on Cream.