When Disney bought Lucasfilm in 2012, one thing that became clear right away was that they didn’t only plan to produce a new Star Wars trilogy, but also a series of spinoffs as well as a new saga. It was uncharted territory for Star Wars, and in trekking such new ground, Disney has found both box office success with Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and box office doldrums with Solo: A Star Wars Story.
An inevitable part of creating enough Star Wars movies to hold up an annual release pattern is that a number of planned Star Wars movies have fallen by the wayside. Some of these got far enough in the development process to secure directors; others remained more shrouded in mystery. Many of these abandoned titles fell into the A Star Wars Story banner that Rogue One and Solo both belong to and that is now in a state of hibernation in the wake of the latter titles box office demise.
The Skywalker saga is over and the future of the franchise is uncertain as the studio has quite a few release dates secured but no actual projects lined up, at least not that the public is aware of. But over the past few years, Lucasfilm had several Star Wars movies in development that were ultimately canceled.
Untitled Boba Fett Film
When the decision to fill up the Star Wars Story banner with spinoff films about already-existing Star Wars characters was made, it was inevitable that a movie about Boba Fett would be one of those projects. A solo movie about Boba Fett was actually one of the first spinoff Star Wars projects announced. However, initially, it was just announced in 2013 as an untitled Star Wars spinoff penned by Simon Kinberg. About a year later, Josh Trank was hired to helm the movie, which seemed to be moving onto the fast track. However, Trank’s departure from the project (making him the first of many directors to leave Disney-era Star Wars movies) in 2015 left the Boba Fett movie in a tailspin.
A few days prior to Solo: A Star Wars Story releasing in theaters, it appeared the project had been given a new lease on life when James Mangold was brought on board to direct. A prolific filmmaker like Mangold taking on this spinoff should have been a sign that the Boba Fett movie was officially a-go, but a few months later, Kathleen Kennedy confirmed that the Boba Fett movie was officially dead. Lucasfilm instead chose to focus on The Mandalorian, a sign that the Star Wars saga was shifting focus from expanding on fan-favorite characters over to entirely new characters. Boba Fett has survived far worse than a movie cancellation, so perhaps this spinoff gets revived one day, but for now, the Boba Fett movie is firmly planted somewhere worse than the Sarlacc Pit: development hell.
Untitled Benioff & Weiss Film
While many of the films on this list never got far in the production process, a Star Wars movie from Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss actually moved far enough along to secure a December 2022 release date. Originally seen as the first Star Wars movie after the Skywalker saga ended, Benioff & Weiss departed the project, reportedly due to conflicts with their recent extensive commitment to creating content for Netflix. Reportedly, their film would have focused on the origins of the Jedi. Disney still has a December 2022 date slated for a Star Wars project of some kind, though it’s unknown if that date is penciled in for a wholly new Star Wars movie or a new version of the film Benioff & Weiss were originally supposed to steer.
Untitled Jabba the Hutt Film
Jabba the Hutt is well-known for being a crime lord, but he was also almost a movie star. One of the many characters Disney was looking to develop solo films for, a Jabba the Hutt movie was being considered as one of the next Star Wars Story titles back in 2017. Interestingly, it wasn’t the first time the prospect of a feature film about Jabba the Hutt had emerged. Back in 2015, director Guillermo del Toro revealed that he had pitched Lucasfilm on doing a solo movie based on this character. Despite having high-profile talent interested in the project, nary a peep has been heard on the Jabba the Hutt film in the last two years and the Star Wars anthology movies being put on pause likely ensures the film will never see the light of day.
Untitled Mos Eisley Spinoff
Back in the summer of 2018, reports began to emerge that the entire Star Wars Story brand, and by proxy numerous films belonging to that umbrella, had been canceled in response to the tepid box office performance of Solo: A Star Wars Story. While further official statements clarified that no such drastic cancellations had been put into place, it turned out one project did bite the dust just as Solo was perishing financially. This discontinued Star Wars project turned out to be an ultra-secret movie based on the Mos Eisley Cantina. This feature was not only in development, but it was apparently preparing to start filming before Solo’s box office performance put its existence on ice. No details have emerged on what story the project would have told or what kind of talent was lined up to tell it, but this Mos Eisley project is the most obvious casualty of Solo’s box office failure forcing Lucasfilm to reconsider how it approaches Star Wars spinoff movies.
Untitled Obi-Wan Film
Perhaps the Star Wars film most requested by fans, a spinoff movie focused on Obi-Wan Kenobi was rumored from the moment Disney announced Star Wars spinoffs were a thing. The project remained just a bundle of rumors for years until summer 2017, when Stephen Daldry was in talks to helm the project. From there, the Obi-Wan movie began to move at an accelerated pace, with the project at one point eyeballing a start date in early 2019. However, like so many Star Wars spinoffs, the Obi-Wan movie fell into disarray once Solo flopped, though apparently major issues with the production, namely Daldry leaving the project, transpired prior to Solo opening.
In the wake of Solo: A Star Wars Story, uncertainty reigned over where exactly the Obi-Wan movie would go, but eventually the project took an unexpected but promising development. Whereas the Mos Eisley Cantina and Boba Fett movies got put on a shelf once Solo flopped, the Obi-Wan movie became more powerful than you can possibly imagine after it got struck down. In August 2019, it was officially announced that Ewan McGregor would be reprising his role as Obi-Wan Kenobi for a Disney+ TV show about Obi-Wan. Later confirmed to be a revamped version of the original Obi-Wan movie, this makes the planned Obi-Wan solo movie the only canceled Star Wars movie to date to find itself resurrected in another storytelling medium.
Next: Every Star Wars Movie Coming After Rise of Skywalker
