Jon Watts gets the Star Wars trilogy Lucasfilm said wasn't Episode X

Lucasfilm spent November 2024 telling reporters that Simon Kinberg's Star Wars trilogy had nothing to do with the Skywalkers. This weekend the same trilogy became Episode X, and Rey is in it.

Jon Watts, who directed the three Tom Holland Spider-Man films and co-created the Disney+ series Skeleton Crew, is attached to the first of Kinberg's three films. The Hollywood Reporter reported the hire on 27 September, describing the trilogy as the next chapter of the Skywalker saga and saying Daisy Ridley would appear as Rey "in some capacity". Lucasfilm had no comment. Disney has not greenlit it.

Deadline filed the same story as Star Wars continuing the Skywalker saga, flatly. The Playlist, which credits Knight Edge Media with breaking it first, added the mechanics: Kinberg has delivered a roughly 70-page treatment after substantially reworking an earlier version, Lucasfilm is casting two relatively unknown actors as the new leads, Ridley's part starts small with room to grow across the films, and Watts is attached to the first one only.

The studio briefed the opposite position in 2024

Deadline broke the existence of the Kinberg trilogy on 7 November 2024, reporting three films written and produced by Kinberg with Kathleen Kennedy, beginning a new series with new characters after The Rise of Skywalker. Lucasfilm then pushed back on the suggestion that the films extended the story George Lucas began in 1977. The Hollywood Reporter reported that they were "not meant to be a continuation of the Skywalker saga" and that the intent was "to have brand-new characters and a brand-new story". Variety carried the same account and noted that Lucasfilm had disputed Deadline's framing.

Twenty-two months later it is Episode X, and a Skywalker is in the cast.

Nothing was announced in between. A studio is entitled to change its mind about a film it has not shot, and a script rebuilt from the ground up is allowed to arrive somewhere new. The part worth noticing is where it arrived: the exact position Lucasfilm briefed against. Read charitably, the 2024 line was a hope that the sequel trilogy's reputation could be left behind, and it has not survived contact with the box office.

Rey's return has now cost four writing teams

On 7 April 2023, at Star Wars Celebration in London, Lucasfilm announced three films: Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy directing Ridley as Rey rebuilding the Jedi order, James Mangold on Dawn of the Jedi, and Dave Filoni closing out the Disney+ series. Damon Lindelof and Justin Britt-Gibson were writing the Rey film.

The sequence since then is worth setting out with dates. Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight replaced Lindelof and Britt-Gibson, and had himself left by October 2024. In November 2024 Disney pulled the untitled Star Wars film from 18 December 2026 and handed the date to Ice Age 6, as Rolling Stone reported. George Nolfi, who wrote The Bourne Ultimatum, was hired on 24 January 2025, per The Hollywood Reporter. On 5 September 2026 Polygon noted that New Jedi Order had turned up in Production Weekly as in development, which fans read as a sign of life. Three weeks later it is reported shelved in favour of Episode X.

Four writing teams and two directors on one job in 41 months. That is a fresh writer roughly every ten months. No film has begun shooting.

All three of the films announced on that London stage remain unmade. Mangold's Dawn of the Jedi was reported dead in March 2026 by the industry journalist Jeff Sneider, who said he could not state it conclusively, and Lucasfilm has confirmed nothing either way. Filoni's New Republic film appeared in the same September 2026 Production Weekly listing, three years after it was announced.

One film in 2,345 days

Between The Rise of Skywalker's American release on 20 December 2019 and The Mandalorian and Grogu on 22 May 2026, Lucasfilm put no Star Wars film in cinemas. That is 2,345 days, six years and five months, from a company that had released five features in the five years to 2019.

The film that ended the drought took $345.8m worldwide on a $165m budget, according to The Numbers. The Rise of Skywalker took $1.077bn on a $275m budget, per Box Office Mojo. So the only Star Wars film Lucasfilm has released this decade made 32% of the last Skywalker film's gross, at 2.1 times its own negative cost, which with a global marketing spend on top is the zone where a studio stops quoting figures and starts talking about brand health.

That is the arithmetic behind the reversal. New characters are a harder sell than a Skywalker, and Disney has spent this year leaning on recognition rather than testing it: the company put Avengers: Endgame back into cinemas this month and watched a seven-year-old film top the box office on 7% of its 2019 opening. Announcing films has never been the difficulty. Delivering the announced number is, which is the same problem Paramount has just promised to solve by tripling its output.

The director who left superhero films

Watts walked away from Marvel's Fantastic Four in April 2022, reported at the time as a wish to step back from superhero work after three Spider-Man pictures. He made Wolfs for Apple, then co-created Skeleton Crew with Christopher Ford and directed its premiere and finale. Opening a nine-figure trilogy is a particular way of getting some distance from franchise film-making, though Skeleton Crew is the strongest argument for him: it is the one recent Star Wars production that found a register of its own rather than restating the films.

Kennedy is not the executive hiring him. She stepped down on 15 January 2026 after nearly 14 years, with Filoni becoming president and chief creative officer and Lynwen Brennan co-president, as Lucasfilm announced. Episode X is the first feature decision of the Filoni era, and it faces backwards.

Lucasfilm hopes to begin production as early as next year, per The Playlist. Shawn Levy's Star Wars: Starfighter, with Ryan Gosling, has already wrapped and opens on 28 May 2027, which is the 50th anniversary of Star Wars itself. Episode X has a treatment, a director for one third of it, and no date. Worth remembering what a date is worth here: Rogue Squadron held 22 December 2023, came off the calendar in September 2022, and was never shot.