A Whole new Generation of Star Wars Films Begins in 2022
While you wait for J.J. Abrams Stars Wars: The Rise of Skywalker to hit theaters this December 20, Disney is hard at work expanding the galaxy. A new Star Wars saga will begin in 2022, although the details are being kept in the Sarlacc pit on Tatooine. Are these three films a new trilogy? Are they going to be one-offs (unlikely, but not impossible)? Who’s making them? What are they about?
Disney has revealed a slew of new release dates for their upcoming slate of films. A whopping seven of them are based either in a galaxy far, far away or on Pandora. The most intriguing are the three new Star Wars films, which could indicate that a brand new trilogy is happening in the near-ish term. Will this be the trilogy that Rian Johnson is working on? Possibly! It could also be the trilogy that Game of Thrones co-creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss are set to create. The first Star Wars film will arrive in theaters in December 2022, with the next two installments coming December 2024 and 2026.
The news isn’t all about Star Wars. Between these films, Disney will be releasing James Cameron’s four upcoming Avatar films. (Yes, four.) So we’ll be doing a lot of interstellar planet hopping for the foreseeable future. Staying with sci-fi, there’s Brad Pitt’s sci-fi flick Ad Astra, which is premiering September 9, 2019.
Over in the comic book world, the X-Men spinoff New Mutants is now bowing on April 3, 2020.We also know there are Marvel films coming out by the truckload, we just don’t know for sure what they are. Their release dates are May 1, 2020; November 6, 2020; February 12, 2021; May 7, 2021; November 5, 2021; February 18, 2022; May 6, 2022; and July 29, 2022.
The Mouse House is also releasing a film based on Cruella de Vil, the villain in The 101 Dalmatians, with Emma Stone in the title role.
It’s not all good news. The long-gestating Gambit film, based on Marvel’s Cajun magical card thrower, is no more. Yet maybe Gambit will have a future, one day, with Disney +? One can dream.
Featured image: The Millenium Falcon in STAR WARS: EPISODE IX. Courtesy Lucasfilm/Walt Disney Studios
