Confirmed: ‘Star Wars’ Movie From Acclaimed Director Scrapped From Slate
Star Wars fans hoping for new theatrical stories beyond the Skywalker Saga just lost one that never even made it to a green light. It turns out the Paddington 2 (2017) creative team once had their own crack at a galaxy far, far away — and now we finally know why it fell apart.
Since Star Wars: Episode IX — The Rise of Skywalker closed out the sequel trilogy in 2019, the franchise has bounced between highs and stumbles, trying to figure out its next chapter. Streaming projects like The Mandalorian and Star Wars: The Bad Batch kept the canon alive and expanding, but the theatrical side of things stayed dormant for years — until The Mandalorian and Grogu hit theaters this past May. Disney has already acknowledged that the film underperformed at the box office, even as the studio remains confident its future belongs on Disney+.
Looking ahead, the next theatrical swing comes from director Shawn Levy with Star Wars: Starfighter, set for a May 2027 release and starring Ryan Gosling. Gosling’s character is reportedly tasked with transporting a Force-sensitive child across the galaxy, a premise that has fans speculating about ties to Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy’s long-gestating “New Jedi Order” project starring Daisy Ridley’s Rey Skywalker, or even Simon Kinberg’s newly announced trilogy.
Speaking of Obaid-Chinoy’s film, it was one of three projects unveiled years ago by former Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy, alongside efforts from James Mangold and Dave Filoni. None of those three have received meaningful updates since their Star Wars Celebration reveal in London three years ago, even as Kinberg’s separate trilogy has since entered the picture.
Right now, the only projects confirmed and moving forward are Ahsoka Season 2 and Levy’s Starfighter — meaning there’s officially nothing locked in for release beyond 2027. And now we know of one more Star Wars story that will never make it to screens at all.
Enter Paul King and Simon Farnaby, the writer-director team behind Paddington 2. Long before that film became a critical darling, the pair was reportedly deep into development on a Star Wars movie of their own, with King attached to direct.
“So we got distracted by that for a while,” Farnaby recently told Variety. According to Farnaby, the concept centered on a robot character and intentionally avoided using any of the saga’s established characters — a decision he now believes sealed the project’s fate. “They were like, we really need it to be a Star Wars movie, which is probably why it didn’t get turned into a Star Wars movie!” he explained. “But we never really nailed it.”
The good news for fans of the concept: Farnaby says the idea hasn’t been abandoned completely. It’s reportedly being reworked into a separate project, no longer tied to the Star Wars universe at all.
Instead of pushing forward with their Star Wars pitch, King and Farnaby pivoted to the Roald Dahl prequel Wonka, starring Timothée Chalamet, which went on to gross roughly $634 million worldwide for Warner Bros. in 2023.
This isn’t the first time a promising Star Wars concept has quietly disappeared before reaching audiences. Fans may remember that Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss were once attached to a major Star Wars prequel — a pitch with striking similarities to James Mangold’s more recent concept exploring the origins of the Force.
With the franchise’s future still very much in flux, all eyes are now on how Starfighter performs next May. If Gosling’s standalone adventure connects with audiences, it could signal to Disney and Lucasfilm that there’s an appetite for stories set outside the core Skywalker timeline — a franchise that, after nearly 50 years centered on one family, might finally be ready for something different.
What do you think — would you have wanted to see a Star Wars movie from the Paddington team? Let us know in the comments.
