While the release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens this past December set the box office on fire and reignited Star Wars fandom all over the world, it was still only the first of a long run of new films that Disney has planned. With the next film in the franchise Star Wars: Rogue One being the first of several planned spinoffs from the main story, the franchise will be trying some entirely new things for the first time in nearly 40 years. The good news is, if Bob Iger is to be believed, everything’s fine.
While we first need to admit that Disney CEO Bob Iger certainly has the justification to be a bit biased when viewing the movies that his studio produces, he seems completely over the moon when he talks about the current state of Star Wars: Rogue One. He recently told Entertainment Weekly:
Filming of Rogue One is virtually completed and we absolutely love what we’ve seen so far. This is the first of a set of planned stand-alone stories and we’re already in preproduction on our next one, for release in May of 2018.
While it’s easy to write off the comments as a CEO promoting his product, this is also the company that just pushed back the release date of Star Wars: Episode VIII because they decided that it needed work. By doing so, they could have just as easily pushed Rogue One back as well if they decided the movie wasn’t quite there, for whatever reason. The fact that they didn’t certainly helps support the idea that Disney is seeing whatever they wanted to see from Star Wars: Rogue One. They certainly got everything they wanted, and likely more, out of Star Wars: The Force Awakens so at this point we’ll just continue to give Disney the benefit of the doubt, at least until they stop deserving it.
The "next one" that Bob Iger makes reference to here is, of course, the highly anticipated young Han Solo story, which is currently set for a May 25, 2018, release. The movie has already been in pre-production for months as the directors have been on the hunt for the actor to play the young smuggler. The last thing we heard, it had been narrowed down to a dozen strong candidates, after nearly every adult male under the age of 40 had submitted a headshot.
We’re looking forward to Star Wars: Rogue One later this year with nearly as much anticipation as we had for the last film. It’s a completely new direction on a classic Star Wars story, which makes it both an exciting, and a terrifying, idea to contemplate. How excited are you to see Rogue One?
