Disney’s plans for Star Wars were made clear nearly from the minute they purchased Lucasfilm. The plans to produce a new trilogy came right alongside the announcement of how many zeroes were on the check they wrote to George Lucas. Shortly after that, they announced there would be additional films as well, which they referred to as Anthology stories. We haven’t heard much about what will happen after this current batch is produced, but we will see more films, that much is clear.
At this point, we know of five more Star Wars movies that Disney is currently planning. While it’s going to be five years before we see the last of them, which should be planning far enough out for anybody, Disney’s chairman, Bob Iger told the BBC that more movies will be coming, though even he isn’t sure what the plan is beyond Colin Trevorrow's sequel.
There are five Star Wars films … that are in varying stages of development and production. There will be more after that. I don't know how many, I don't know how often.
Four of the five films are locked in stone. We have the two additional episodes needed to complete the current trilogy as well as this year’s Rogue One and 2018's Han Solo film. The fifth movie is strongly believed to be a solo outing for Boba Fett, though that has never been officially confirmed by Disney. After that, the slate is blank, at least publicly. The closer we get to the release of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, one has to expect that the fifth planned film is coming closer to confirmation and the sixth one is becoming close enough to a reality that the rumors should begin to flow.
With one Star Wars movie planned every year going forward, one would expect that Disney will likely keep to that schedule as best they can. While Bob Iger may not have any specific knowledge of how often future films are planned, previous reports have stated that one a year is exactly what Lucasfilm is going to try and do. As far as how many? Well those same reports have stated that "forever" is the timeline that they’re working on.
This would put Star Wars in the same boat as Marvel, as Bob Iger previously stated in the same interview that with Marvel’s diverse cast of characters, he expects the films to continue more or less forever. While Star Wars does not have the character depth that Marvel has, what they do have is a giant galaxy, the vast majority of which we’ve never seen. New characters have already been created by Disney, and embraced by fans, so they likely won’t have any problem continuing to do that as needed.
While Disney has a proven track record with Marvel now, we’re still only looking at a single movie with Star Wars: The Force Awakens. As with the first Iron Man movie, we are certainly impressed with the first outing. Now let's see if they can keep it up.
