A New Hope for a Fresh “Star Wars” Saga: New Trilogy to be Written & Produced by “X-Men” Alum Simon Kinberg
From the sprawling, brawling world of mutants on X-Men to the intergalactic intrigue in a galaxy far, far away—this is the path for former X-Men writer, director, and producer Simon Kinberg. Although it’s a path that Kinberg knows well.
News broke that Kinberg is working with Lucasfilm on a brand-new Star Wars trilogy alongside Lucasfilm studio chief Kathleen Kennedy, which will kickstart a whole new set of characters separate from the previous trilogy, which ended in 2019 with Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker and starred Daisy Ridley, Adam Driver, John Boyega, and Oscar Isaac. Kinberg initially helped launch the new Star Wars trilogy, 2015’s The Force Awakens, acting as a consultant to the J.J. Abrams-directed film. Deadline initially reported that Kinberg’s trilogy would bring us back to George Lucas’s mega-story, which he started (and helped usher in a new era of cinema, too) with his 1977 game-changer Star Wars: A New Hope. That film introduced us to Mark Hamill’s Luke Skywalker, Harrison Ford’s Han Solo, and Carrie Fisher’s Princess Leia, characters that would appear in the last trilogy, beginning with Ford in The Force Awakens and Hamill and Fisher in The Last Jedi. Hamill would then reappear in Force Ghost form in The Rise of Skywalker.
So Kinberg is no stranger to spaceships and alien battles—he also co-created the animated series Star Wars: Rebels with Dave Filoni and Carrie Beck, which ran for four seasons from 2014 to 2018. He’s also part of that other iconic franchise that deals in hyperspace, Star Trek, as he’s attached to produce Paramount’s upcoming Star Trek film directed by Toby Haynes and written by Seth Grahame-Smith. Kinberg will be one of the rare folks to brandish a lightsaber and phaser creatively and possibly the first to do so simultaneously.
Details about Kinberg’s Star Wars project are frozen in carbonite for the time being, but Lucasfilm has said it’s decidedly not a continuation of the 9-film arc of the Skywalker saga, which included Lucas’s original trilogy, the prequel trilogy, and the most recent trilogy. New characters and a new adventure will give Star Wars a chance to expand on the big screen in a way it hasn’t before—and how it is on the small screen in the live-action Disney+ series.
Kinberg was a major part of Fox’s run of X-Men movies, including producing James Mangold’s beloved Logan and the first two Deadpool films. His next film is Edgar Wright’s reboot of Stephen King’s The Running Man, which previously was given a big screen adaptation in a 1987 film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.
The next Star Wars saga will be on the small screen in the Jude Law-led Skeleton Crew, which arrives on Disney+ on December 3.
For more on all things Star Wars, check out these stories:
The First Trailer for “Skeleton Crew” Unveils the Jude Law-led Disney+ “Star Wars” Series
“The Acolyte” Composer Michael Abels on Scoring a “Star Wars” Story Unlike Any Before It
Get Mauled by The Trailer for the Remastered “Star Wars: The Phantom Menace”
Featured image: The Millenium Falcon in SOLO: A STAR WARS STORY.
