{"id":651760,"date":"2026-06-22T06:59:16","date_gmt":"2026-06-22T06:59:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/651760\/"},"modified":"2026-06-22T06:59:16","modified_gmt":"2026-06-22T06:59:16","slug":"our-own-star-wars-studio-mandates-starfighter-hype-and-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/651760\/","title":{"rendered":"Our Own ‘Star Wars’ Studio Mandates, ‘Starfighter’ Hype, and More"},"content":{"rendered":"

Happy Sunday (or Monday, as I\u2019m a little late today), and welcome to a new edition of \u201cThis Week, In a Galaxy Far, Far Away<\/a>\u201c. The period of Star Wars news drought continues, but I\u2019m trying to make up for it tonight with my own version of a studio mandate for Lucasfilm to try to get back on its feet.<\/p>\n

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We\u2019ll get there, but first, make sure to check out Josh\u2019s latest Character Spotlight on Carson Teva<\/a>, the special sauce that was (for the most part) missing from The Mandalorian and Grogu. There was also no live show this week, as SWNN Live! is now on an early summer hiatus. We\u2019ll be back in a few weeks.<\/p>\n

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Remember that you can sign up for our Discord server here<\/a>. Let\u2019s begin.<\/p>\n

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Three Things That May Have Flown Casual<\/p>\n

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Everyone loves their job: Matt Smith is the latest\u00a0Starfighter actor to be hyping up<\/a> Shawn Levy\u2019s summer blockbuster, adding that a very early cut of the film already exists. Similarly, Eman Esfandi also shared his excitement<\/a> about the new season of Ahsoka, which he is a much bigger part of.
\nEveryone loves the Minions\u2026 Well, maybe not everyone, but I bet you didn\u2019t expect to learn this weekend that George Lucas actually does, and he even voiced a role<\/a> in the upcoming\u00a0Minions and Monsters!
\nPublishing updates: We have a preview for September\u2019s comic-book releases. Most noticeably to me, the slate includes<\/a> the first issue of The Fall of Kylo Ren.<\/p>\n

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Five Studio Mandates for Lucasfilm<\/p>\n

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On Tuesday evening (US time), reporter Jeff Sneider took to his newsletter<\/a> to share bits of a 19-page document allegedly compiled by an agency or management company with their recommended studio mandates for this year. It also contained some instructions for Lucasfilm \u2014 though it\u2019s unclear whether this would have been put together before or after The Mandalorian and Grogu was released. I would assume before.<\/p>\n

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We didn\u2019t report this for a couple of reasons. Most importantly, these are not even Disney\u2019s mandates; just recommendations from an external company that Lucasfilm may or may not listen to. They also contain rather obvious stuff, like pointing out Dave Filoni and Lynwen Brennan must \u201cbalance aspirational storytelling with engaging the next generation of fans.\u201d You think?<\/p>\n

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But I am also not entirely sure of the validity of the document. For starters, Sneider even started the piece saying there was some infomration in there about a top-secret\u00a0Star Wars project that he then fact-checked was not real. Why would that be in there?\u00a0At first I thought he was being played on. (Lucasfilm also did not respond to him when given a chance to comment.) He followed up the first piece with another on Paramount<\/a>, among others, where he said he\u2019d spent the afternoon fact-checking the contents of the document, adding that it also contained information on the new\u00a0Survivor project that would be announced after he got access to the document.<\/p>\n

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Whether the document was real or not, it doesn\u2019t really matter. But it did give me an idea for today\u2019s column, where I give five recommendations to Lucasfilm on how to approach the next few years. Here they are:<\/p>\n

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Move away from the Skywalker Saga. We start off with a complicated one, as the only project that Lucasfilm, during the Disney era, has released so far outside of the Skywalker Saga timeline (Episodes I-IX) is\u00a0The Acolyte, which did not work \u2014 but for totally different reasons (poor writing). I think they will find success in\u00a0Starfighter and Simon Kinberg\u2019s trilogy because of this, but they shouldn\u2019t stop there. I think the key to monumental Star Wars success is the Old Republic, whether that is actually going 2,000 years into the past, or recreating the conditions of that time period, but decades after\u00a0The Rise of Skywalker.
\nA new movie every Christmas. Under Disney, Lucasfilm has released six theatrical movies; two on the traditional\u00a0Star Wars window of Memorial Day Weekend, and four right before Christmas. Can you guess which four movies grossed $1 billion, and which two didn\u2019t cross $400M at the box office? This is not a recipe for success, and there are obviously additional circumstances going into each of these releases. But audiences were at least aware that\u00a0Star Wars was something special, just like Christmas. We don\u2019t need to oversaturate the market, and we also don\u2019t many years between movies anymore. An alternative would be to follow Illumination\u2019s modus operandi, and release a new movie every other year, to still feed your fanbase but don\u2019t seem to think they are hungrier than they really are.
\nStory is king. I\u2019m a bit fed up with these marketing plays surrounding most of Jon Favreau\u2019s\u00a0Star Wars stories highlighting the practical effects that went into the new movie or TV show, or how they brought back this unused ship from the original trilogy or that unused model from this other thing. It\u2019s as if the crafts or the lore tie-ins became more important than actually making an enjoyable movie, or even worse, as if that\u2019s what made it an enjoyable movie in the first place. It\u2019s not. We don\u2019t love the original trilogy because of how it revolutionized special effects; we love it because of the story it told while doing so. The narrative of \u201cThis is Jon Favreau playing with his toys in his garage\u201d is starting to feel very flat; it\u2019s as if we were focused on George Lucas saying that these stories are for the kids while forgetting that what has made them last for 50 years is that we can take as much away from them when being adults.
\nChallenge yourself. Audiences are growing tired of being taken for granted. The reason why Chris Nolan\u2019s fanbase is growing, while Marvel\u2019s is dwindling, is because one puts out something new and exciting every time, and the other is simply recycling the same template for a plot.\u00a0Solo, The Rise of Skywalker, and The Mandalorian and Grogu are pretty risk-averse stories. But\u00a0Star Wars has never been that. A New Hope succeeded by challenging the status quo of movies at the time; The Empire Strikes Back flipped it on itself. The prequels were controversial for many reasons, one of which was that Lucas decided to tell a different kind of story. Even The Force Awakens, as safe a movie as it is, decided to sideline the original trilogy characters in favor of a new generation; Rogue One also decided to take some risks with its characters when it woke up from the comma that was its first hour, and\u00a0Andor succeeded by doubling down on that premise. And yes, even The Last Jedi made $1.3 billion, an undeniable success.
\nDon\u2019t forget to inspire hope. No matter how grim any\u00a0Star Wars story has been, there has always been a glimmer of hope at the end.\u00a0The Empire Strikes Back\u00a0ends on a pretty dark place, but the last shot was able to communicate that with our friends by our side, we could take on an Empire. The Last Jedi killed everyone\u2019s childhood hero and ended with the sending of a message that was probably not received by anyone in the galaxy; and yet, that little broom kid still put a smile on my face at the end. Even Andor, as dark as it got near its end, managed to make a case for a barely organized little militia being able to topple a fascist regime. I could go on. This will not make your new Star Wars movie good, but it will take it from a good movie to an unforgettable experience.<\/p>\n

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What did you think of the latest edition of \u201cThis Week, In a Galaxy Far, Far Away\u201d? Let me know your thoughts and suggestions down below in the comment section. You can also send them, or reach out with any information tips, directly via our Contact page<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Have a great week!<\/p>\n

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\t\t
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Miguel Fern\u00e1ndez is a Spanish student that has movies as his second passion in life. His favorite movie of all time is The Lord of the Rings,\u00a0but he is also a huge Star Wars fan. However, fantasy movies are not his only cup of tea, as movies from Scorsese, Fincher, Kubrick or Hitchcock have been an obsession for him since he started to understand the language of filmmaking. He is that guy who will watch a black and white movie, just because it is in black and white.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Happy Sunday (or Monday, as I\u2019m a little late today), and welcome to a new edition of \u201cThis…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":651761,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[96,23067,2839,2591,26406,38500,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-651760","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-lucasfilm","tag-movies","tag-star-wars","tag-star-wars-starfighter","tag-this-week-far-far-away","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/651760","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=651760"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/651760\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/651761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=651760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=651760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=651760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}