In a recent interview with Games Radar, Kathleen Kennedy clarified her comments about recasting Star Wars characters and more.
Kathleen Kennedy recently spoke with Games Radar about the future of Star Wars and how Disney is looking to move forward as certain actors age and as real-time passes with each new story.
Some key highlights of Kennedy’s comments were her mention of Donald Glover still being in talks to return as Lando as well as clarification on her previous comments on how Lucasfilm will approach recasting older characters.
The future of the movies is still in movement?
Of course, they’ve been in movement all along. As we leave the saga, we have all this great, exciting work happening on the television side that informs so much about where we’re going. We want to be very intentional about that. And we have great talent that we’re working with – people who care so deeply about what the next iteration of Star Wars is and about getting people back into movie theatres, so we can really come out with a bang. That’s important to us.
Do you think that is a hesitancy perhaps in exploring past the Skywalker Saga?
No hesitancy.
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So that’s very much on your mind?
Oh, yes. We need to create a whole new saga. That takes a lot. There’s a lot of conversation around that.
Obi-Wan’s coming out next, and there’s been such love for the prequels. Will there be more of exploring that era ahead?
That’s exactly what we’re doing with John Favreau and Dave Filoni and Jon Watts, especially Dave’s new show Ahsoka. We realize there’s kind of been a pattern of a new generation coming along. All the kids of the kids end up loving the prequels and their parents loved the original movies, and now we have the sequels, not very long ago, there’ll be a whole generation attached to that. It’s always important in Star Wars because it’s one story that we carry forward. That’s the way we look at this. It’s a persistent story that goes on and on. And sometimes we can look back and other times we can look forward. And that’s the way we look at it as we talk about what those new projects might be, whether it’s TV, a movie, and eventually a game. So many of the people in the audience, they’re there, now they’re moving from one to the next at Disneyland, in the parks, you want to have that relate to the experiences you’re having on TV or in the movies or so though. It becomes a very broad subject.
There were some quotes before this from yourself implying that we won’t see any more characters recast with younger actors.
I never say never. It’s certainly not something that we’re doing with any intention right now. We’re still talking about Lando with Donald Glover, for instance, but I don’t think we would intentionally just look back at some of the characters like Luke and Leia and whatnot and decide arbitrarily to do a story. There would have to be a really strong reason why.
And finally, is there a future for Solo?
There’s always a future for Solo!
