It’s over four years since pop culture’s most famous galaxy far, far away last graced theaters, but this guide to new Star Wars movies and TV shows proves that the universe George Lucas built hasn’t turned its back on the big screen. Indeed, from the upcoming movie adventures of The Mandalorian & Grogu to new television drama The Acolyte (due in June 2024), it’s set to be a busy few years at Lucasfilm.
The current slate of new Star Wars TV shows and movies will take us on a journey through the franchise’s epic timeline, with a trip back in time to the origins of the Jedi, a The Rise of Skywalker follow-up focussed on Rey rebuilding the Jedi Order, and another story set in the time period of The Mandalorian, courtesy of the “Goonies in space” Skeleton Crew. We can also look forward to a Lando Calrissian standalone story, a Rogue Squadron movie, and the TV returns of Andor and Ahsoka.
Below you can find out about the new Star Wars TV shows and movies preparing to make the jump out of hyperspace, many of them coming to Disney Plus (one of the best streaming services on planet Earth). And if you want to catch up on what’s already out there, check out our guide to watching Star Wars in order.
New Star Wars TV shows
The Acolyte
Release date: June 4, 2024
Every canonical Star Wars movie and TV show to date has been set in the relatively brief seven-decade period between The Phantom Menace and The Rise of Skywalker. That all changes with The Acolyte, as showrunner Leslye Headland (Russian Doll) winds the clock back more than a century to explore the Jedi Order’s glory days in the High Republic.
“An investigation into a shocking crime spree pits a respected Jedi Master against a dangerous warrior from his past,” says the official synopsis on StarWars.com. “As more clues emerge, they travel down a dark path where sinister forces reveal all is not what it seems…”
The cast includes Amandla Stenberg (The Hate U Give, Dear Evan Hansen), Lee Jung-Jae (Squid Game), Jodie Turner-Smith (Queen & Slim), Carrie-Anne Moss (The Matrix), Joonas Suotamo (Solo: A Star Wars Story) and Dafne Keen (His Dark Materials). The new show has been touted as a mystery thriller, and will focus on characters who would previously have been considered villains.
“I think when you think you’re going to tell the story about bad guys, and the Jedis might be the antagonist to those [dark] Jedis, I think that makes people nervous,” Headland told Collider. “But it didn’t make Kathy [Kennedy, Lucasfilm president] nervous, so I was able to fold in what I know about Star Wars, and what I love about Star Wars, into what she’s always pushing for, which is, ‘What’s the emotional throughline?'”
Skeleton Crew
Release date: 2024 (date TBC)
Despite being yet another show set in the increasingly crowded Mandalorian sector of the Star Wars timeline, Skeleton Crew will have a very different mission briefing to its predecessors. Jon Watts, director of the three MCU-set Spider-Man movies, reportedly pitched the show as The Goonies in space, and Disney say it’ll focus on a group of kids trying to find their way home after making a mysterious discovery. Luckily for them, they won’t be making their journey across a dangerous galaxy alone – Jude Law is coming along for the ride as their protector, who may or may not be a Jedi.
“I can’t tell you very much about my character,” Law told Entertainment Weekly. “He is someone the children meet on their attempt to get home. He is like a lot of the world that they experience: contradictory, and at times a place of nurture and at other times a place of threat.”
Andor season 2
- Empty list
Release date: 2025 (TBC)
Arguably the most critically acclaimed of all Disney Plus’s Star Wars TV shows, Andor’s ambitious, morally complex first season showed us a darker, grittier side to a galaxy far, far away. Creator/showrunner Tony Gilroy returns to continue the story of Cassian Andor, Mon Mothma and the early days of the Rebel Alliance, with this second and final season. Andor season 2‘s 12 episodes will unfold over four years leading up to the events of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.
“When we come back, it’ll be literally like a Friday, Saturday and Sunday,” Gilroy said when explaining the second season’s structure to Deadline. “Then, we’ll jump a year, and then it’ll be, like, four or five days, and then we’ll jump a year, and then there’ll be another four or five days, and then we jump a year, and be another four or five days.”
Diego Luna and Genevieve O’Reilly are back as Andor and Mothma, respectively, alongside fellow returnees Stellan Skarsgård (Luthen Rael), Denise Gough (Dedra Meero), Kyle Soller (Syril Karn) and Adria Arjona (Bix Caleen). Principal photography on season 2 began in November 2022, and Gilroy told the Celebration crowd last April that he was pushing for an August 2024 debut. Hollywood’s writers’ and actors’ strikes delayed production, however, so we’re unlikely to see the resolution of Cassian’s story this side of 2025 – especially as the show was conspicuous by its absence from Disney Plus’s 2024 release schedule.
Tales of the Jedi season 2
Release date: TBC
The first season of CG-animated Tales of the Jedi shorts filled a few gaps in the origin stories of Ahsoka Tano and Jedi-turned-Sith Count Dooku. It also revealed what happened to Yaddle who was – before The Mandalorian‘s Grogu – the only other member of Yoda’s species we’d ever seen on screen.
Not much is known about season two aside from the fact it’s happening, and that it’ll presumably involve delving into the histories of a few Jedi. In other words, if you want to know more about the likes of Shaak Ti, Ki-Adi-Mundo and Kit Fisto, this is likely to be the place to come. “Tales of the Jedi was so fun the first time, I decided to do some more,” Clone Wars, Rebels and Ahsoka showrunner Dave Filoni said at Star Wars Celebration in 2023.
Ahsoka season 2
Release date: TBC
The return of Anakin Skywalker’s former apprentice was confirmed by StarWars.com in January 2024. That’s not a major surprise, seeing as the Ahsoka season 1 finale left plenty of storylines up in the air, with – SPOILERS AHEAD! – Ahsoka Tano (Rosario Dawson) and Sabine Wren (Natasha Liu Bordizzo) trapped in another galaxy, and Imperial mastermind Grand Admiral Thrawn (Lars Mikkelsen) back on home turf to make trouble for the New Republic.
Unsurprisingly, we know little about where the series goes next, though showrunner (and Lucasfilm’s newly anointed chief creative officer) Dave Filoni has drawn the season 2 concept art featured above. It shows Tano and Wren looking out from a very The Lord of the Rings-esque statue on the remote world of Peridea.
New Star Wars movies
The Mandalorian & Grogu
Release date: 2026 (TBC)
Baby Yoda is coming to movie theaters! In what must be a synergistic dream come true for Disney shareholders, that galaxy far, far away is following the lead of the Marvel Cinematic Universe by carrying plotlines originated on TV over to the big screen. In fact, new Star Wars movie The Mandalorian & Grogu – confirmed in a surprise January 2024 announcement – seems set to be The Mandalorian season 4 in all but name, picking up the story of Din Djarin and his apprentice, the little green guy formerly known as Baby Yoda.
The Mandalorian creator, lead writer and showrunner Jon Favreau will direct the new movie, which is set to go into production in 2024. According to a post on X (the platform formerly known as Twitter) from The Hollywood Reporter‘s Borys Kit, Disney Boss Bob Iger has confirmed that The Mandalorian & Grogu will be the first new Star Wars movie out of the blocks, likely to land in 2026:
Star Wars: Iger confirms that THE MANDALORIAN & GROGU will be the first of the new slate of Star Wars movies, likely to hit in 2026.February 7, 2024
But fear not, the duo’s transfer to the big screen doesn’t mean they’re turning their backs on Disney Plus – Deadline reports that a fourth season of The Mandalorian TV show is still in development.
The Mandalorian/Ahsoka spin-off movie
Release date: TBC
The overlapping stories of The Mandalorian, The Book of Boba Fett, Ahsoka and (presumably) Skeleton Crew are all set to come together in this “cinematic event”, as the “escalating war between the Imperial Remnant and the fledgling New Republic” reaches a climax. Dave Filoni, Ahsoka showrunner and long-time protector of Star Wars lore, is lined up to direct.
“I hesitate to say it’s a big meet-up from just [The Mandalorian, Ahsoka, The Book of Boba Fett and Skeleton Crew], because Dave has been developing Star Wars storytelling inside Clone Wars and Rebels and so much of the work he has done for 20 years,” Kathleen Kennedy told Entertainment Weekly. “So it will be little bits of all that. There are a lot of sources he’s drawing from to see where we’re going.”
It appears, however, that Filoni is playing his sabacc cards close to his chest when it comes to confirming which characters are following him to the big screen – so close, in fact, that not even his stars know if they’ll be called into action. “When I heard they were doing the movie at Celebration in London, I was like, ‘Maybe one day I’ll find out whether I’m a part of that!’” Ahsoka star Natasha Liu Bordizzo told SFX magazine last summer (via GamesRadar). “This is one of those times when I can so happily tell you I have no idea what’s going on with that. I’m happy not to, because that way I don’t have to lie to you!”
The Jedi origins movie
Release date: TBC
The Acolyte may be going back to a time a few centuries before the events of The Phantom Menace but that’s nothing compared to this Jedi origin story. In fact, at risk of coming over a bit Star Trek, this pre-prequel is boldly going where no Star Wars movie has gone before. James Mangold (who was once attached to a direct a Boba Fett movie, and clearly impressed Lucasfilm with his work on Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny) is the filmmaker lined up to take the franchise millennia into the history of that galaxy far, far away – to what StarWars.com describes as the “Dawn of the Jedi” era.
The official summary says the film “will take audiences deep into the past, telling the tale of the first Jedi to wield the Force and harness it as a liberating power in an era of chaos and oppression.”
“I want to be part of the saga, but I also don’t want to be holding so much lore in the air that you can hardly tell a story,” Mangold explained in an interview with iO9. “What I told [Lucasfilm boss Kathleen Kennedy] was, can we make a kind of Ten Commandments of the Force, a kind of origin story of how this Force came to be known, understood, wielded and harnessed.”
Rey’s New Jedi Order movie
Release date: TBC
This movie – the first release to expand the Star Wars chronology beyond The Rise of Skywalker – picks up Rey’s story roughly 15 years later, in the newly named “New Jedi Order” era. Sequel trilogy star Daisy Ridley will return as Rey, as she rebuilds the Jedi Order and faces up to “the powers that rise to tear it down”. Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy (Saving Face, Ms Marvel) is signed up to direct.
“We’re coming off what was a major war with the First Order,” Kathleen Kennedy said in an interview with GamesRadar. “And now, Rey has made a promise to Luke, and that’s really the core of where we’re going and what this story will be. And I think it offers just a tremendous opportunity to introduce new characters and start with something fresh, because we culminated with what George [Lucas] was creating, and now we take all of that and move it to the next chapter.”
In January 2024, Ridley told AlloCiné (via Deadline): “I think it’s a really fantastic exploration of the Star Wars world. It’s a really cool way of taking the story on in a bit of a different direction.”
Lando
Release date: TBC
Card player, gambler, scoundrel… you’d like him! So much, in fact, that the former administrator of Cloud City is being lined up headline his own movie.
The one and only Lando Calrissian had been set to front his own event TV series. Dear White People creator and Haunted Mansion director Justin Simien was attached to write the show, and star Donald Glover was was reportedly keen to return to a role he first played in 2018’s Solo: A Star Wars Story. Then things went rather quiet, until Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy told IGN at Star Wars Celebration 2023 that “[Lando‘s] still happening”.
It’s since gained significant momentum. News broke in July that Simien had left the project (as confirmed by Entertainment Weekly), and that Atlanta creator/star Glover would now be writing a TV show with his brother (and frequent collaborator) Stephen.
Calrissian’s unexpected shift to the big screen was confirmed by Stephen Glover during his September appearance on the Pablo Torre Finds Out podcast. “It’s not even a show…” he said. “The idea right now is to do a movie. Right now, because of the [Hollywood writers/actors] strike, it’s kind of like telephone, all of the information.” According to Variety, Lando‘s transfer to theaters was subsequently confirmed by Lucasfilm.
Other Star Wars movies in the works
Yoda once said that, “Always in motion is the future”, and the diminutive Jedi Master easily have been talking about the Star Wars movie slate since the release of The Rise of Skywalker. Several projects have come and gone since the franchise made its last visit to theaters in 2019, and although some have subsequently been abandoned, two of the highest profile new Star Wars movies remain in the pipeline.
Rogue Squadron, the pilot-focussed movie that was pulled from its original December 2023 slot (per Variety), is seemingly still a going concern. Kennedy told IGN at Star Wars Celebration in April 2023 that this Top Gun-in-space blockbuster “definitely is something that we still talk about. Whether it’s a movie, or whether it ends up being in the [TV] series space, that’s definitely something.” Meanwhile, Wonder Woman director Patty Jenkins (who was thought to have departed the project) revealed in March 2024 that she’s working on a new draft of the Rogue Squadron movie.
Thor: Ragnarok and Thor: Love and Thunder director Taika Waititi (who’s both directed and starred in episodes of The Mandalorian) continues to orbit a Star Wars movie of his own. “Taika is still working away,” said Lucasfilm boss Kathleen Kennedy in April 2023. “He’s writing the script himself. He doesn’t really want to bring others into that process and I don’t blame him. He has a very, very unique voice. So we want to protect that.”
It may be a while before we see the film – “I’ve got about four other scripts that I’m trying to finish,” Waititi told ET – but the writer/director has said (via the Hollywood Reporter) that “I’ve got a really great idea for it.”
For more Star Wars coverage, find out which projects made it onto our best Disney Plus movies and best Disney Plus shows guides.
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