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Disney has unveiled a host of new projects for the next decade at an investor event.
On Thursday, Lucasfilm boss Kathleen Kennedy announced that the new Star Wars movie, Rogue Squadron, will be directed by Wonder Woman’s Patty Jenkins, the first time a female director has taken over one of the films in the franchise.
On Twitter, Jenkins posted a video explaining that she had long wanted to make a film about a fighter pilot, the profession of her late father, who died when she was seven. The film will be released on Christmas 2023.
Kennedy added that Taika Waititi, who won an Oscar earlier this year for his screenplay for Jojo Rabbit, was still writing the script for another as-yet-untitled film in the franchise that Disney announced in May.
Kennedy also revealed that Disney + has plans for 10 Star Wars series and 10 Marvel series in the near future, and that Hayden Christensen, who played Anakin Skywalker in the Star Wars prequels, will return to play Darth Vader in the next. Obi-Wan miniseries starring Ewan McGregor.
Donald Glover will reprise his role as a space smuggler for the television series Lando, having first appeared alongside Alden Ehrenreich in the 2018 origins film Solo: A Star Wars Story.
The success of the spinoff series The Mandalorian, which introduced Baby Yoda to the world, had opened, Kennedy said, “a whole new era for Star Wars.”
Star Wars veteran Harrison Ford, 78, will return as Indiana Jones for a fifth and final installment in the series, to be directed by Logan’s James Mangold. Meanwhile, Zac Efron will star in a Disney + reboot of the child care game Three Men and a Baby.
In the same presentation, Marvel boss Kevin Feige paid tribute to Chadwick Boseman, the late Black Panther star, and confirmed that Ryan Coogler’s upcoming sequel to the superhero hit will not recast his central character, but rather explore the stories of the supporting cast.
The film, which opens in July 2022, is also not expected to attempt to digitally recreate Boseman, who died of cancer at age 43 in August.
Meanwhile, Christian Bale will be leaving the DC world, in which he once played Batman, to co-star in Marvel’s Thor: Love and Thunder, which opens in May 2022, as the main villain Gorr the God Butcher.
Nia DaCosta, whose long-awaited reboot of the horror series Candyman is scheduled for next year, will take the reins of Captain Marvel 2, a second outing for superhero head Brie Larson. And Jon Watts, the director behind the current Spider-Man trilogy, will direct a new Fantastic Four movie, about the team that started Marvel history in the 1960s.
Feige also revealed the first looks for Falcon & the Winter Soldier, which will launch on Disney + in March, and Tom Hiddleston’s Loki series, which will premiere in May.
Disney’s swift launch of its streaming channel during the pandemic has fueled the studio’s ascent to a seemingly impregnable domain of the mainstream movie landscape. On Thursday, the studio announced that it had reached 86 million subscribers in its first year, and that prices will go up next year.
Pixar’s latest film, Soul, will bypass a theatrical release and will premiere on the channel on Christmas Day. Thursday’s presentation offered no further information on the fate of Black Widow, the upcoming Avengers origins film starring Scarlett Johansson, whose release date has changed numerous times.
Similarly, Feige was mum on the progress of James Cameron’s Avatar sequels, set to premiere in 2022, 2024 and 2026, which Disney acquired in its $ 71.3 billion (£ 54 billion) asset purchase from 21st. Century Fox in 2019.
