Will There Be a Star Wars Movie in 2023? Probably Not

Ever since Solo: A Star Wars Story flopped back in 2018 the only Star Wars film to make it to the big screen has been The Rise of Skywalker--a reflection of how that financial catastrophe forced a Big Rethink of the earlier glib notion of making Star Wars into a Marvel-like movie machine (which, if matching Marvel, might have had a dozen movies out by now instead, even with the pandemic and everything else happening). Very early on I--and I would imagine, pretty much everyone not taking a paycheck from the ever-more claqueur-like entertainment press--got into the habit of taking the report of every upcoming new Star Wars film with the proverbial grain of salt. So did it go for the recent reports of as many as four Star Wars movies recently in the works, two of which projects seem to have been officially confirmed defunct this week (Patty Jenkins' Rogue Squadron, along with another production being overseen by the now-departed Kevin Feige). That still leaves the movies by Taika Waititi (you know, the guy you can thank for Thor 4), and the Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy movie supposed to be scripted by Damon Lindelof and Justin Britt-Gibson. I cannot rule out that those movies will still happen--but I do not think that Waititi's movie, if it gets made, will be out by December this year as earlier reported, while even if everything goes right for the Obaid-Chinoy movie I see no sign it will come out by then either. The result is that there will probably not be a Star Wars film out until 2024--if then. In the meantime Star Wars will remain very active indeed on the small screen, which may, in spite of the continued commitment to theatrical release in the wake of their experiments with the alternatives underlining that there is simply no substitute for a $20 ticket, continue to increasingly be the franchise's principal and natural home, just as it has ever been for the other big "Star" franchise, Star Trek.