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From Shawn Levy’s film in early development to the game that’s been in development forever, and more, we’re recapping what’s new in the world of Star Wars in the past week or so. Punch it!
Note: The YouTube version of the show will appear below at 9:00am Eastern Time (USA).
Raw Episode Transcript:
Hey, Rebel Rouser, I’m Allen Voivod, and this is Star Wars 7 by 7, your daily dose of Star Wars joy. Thank you so much for joining me for it. We did this a while back trying to see if we could task AI with wrapping up and summarizing Star Wars’ news stories of late. But yeah, AI is no good for that just yet. So you got to do it the old-fashioned way. This is what’s been happening in the last week or so with Star Wars news.
First of all, Shawn Levy, Shawn Levy, Stranger Things fame and Deadpool 3 fame was asked about what he has in mind for a Star Wars movie, how that’s going to work. This was a thing in Variety on their website. This is one thing that was fun. They asked him if he would do things differently or how he’s going to do things differently.
He said, When Kathy Kennedy brought me on board to make a Star Wars movie, her central mandate to me was, I want a Shawn Levy movie. I want a story and a tone that reflects you and your taste and what you bring to your movies with a Star Wars story. He says that, I felt extremely empowered were in early days, but unfortunately, because of the development process being abruptly paused due to the WGA strike, he feels very empowered to trust his instincts and the development of the story in the movie.
The interviewer went on to ask him if his Deadpool 3 practice could be any good use for Star Wars. He said that the experience he’s having with Marvel on Deadpool is showing you firsthand that it’s indeed really possible to feel empowered and personal about making a movie within a universe that is bigger than any one film, and that the Deadpool movie is turning out to be exactly what Ryan and he had hoped when they started off. He’s going into the development of a Star Wars movie with a similar optimism and faith that his instincts will be allowed to lead the way, which is the stuff that we all want to hear. Then, of course, there’s the last question, which is, since you’re close to Adam Driver, could your Star Wars movie be a prequel to The Force Awakens, in which Kylo Wren would be back?
His response is, Your words, not mine. As you know, Adam is a buddy, and I’ve always been a huge fan of Kylo Ren, but no comment.
That in itself is a really fascinating non-answer. To even say something along the lines of, Hey, we’re still in development. We can’t talk about any of what’s it about? Where is it happening? Or anything like that. But yeah, that feels like it opens the door a little bit or suggests that maybe that there is some rumor going around that the writer got a hold of and decided to try to confirm. Then I have to say, I’m not necessarily one for gossip, but this is the gossipy thing that I would love to know. I would love to know if Adam Driver was particularly married to the Kylo Ren character, if he loves it enough that he’d want to dig into it again, how he felt about JJ Abrams’ view of Kylo Ren versus Rian Johnson’s view of Kylo Ren. I’m curious about it from just a genuine creative perspective, but I know it gets into that gossipy territory, too. Anyway, so that’s probably the biggest Star Wars news that’s happened of late, the discussion with Shawn Levy.
It doesn’t necessarily give us any insight into whether he will be one of those first three movies necessarily. I mean, who knows where James Mangold is in his development, and who knows where Dave Filoni is in his development as well. We know that the Jedi Order, Daisy Ridley movie is definitely very far along in his development, and so seems likely to be one of those first three movies. Shawn Levy? Yeah, I don’t know. Maybe not one of those three. One of the first three out of the gate. In other words, a fourth one. Wouldn’t that be fantastic?
Also, Star Wars Newsnet reported on this. They caught a thing in Ubisoft’s quarterly earnings report that seems to suggest Star Wars Hunters is not going to come out for a much longer time. The indication had been that it was going to be late in their fiscal 2024 situation, which would have put it in the first quarter of the year, so basically by the end of March of ’24. But they’re doing so well that they said that they could just push it off, basically. They don’t have to put it out and they can give it the full attention that they want to give it is how they pitched it, basically.
Now they’re saying that it’s not going to come out until the ’24/’25 fiscal year, which means sometime between April of 2024 and March of 2025. One would imagine that if they were prepared to release it by March, that they would probably release it sooner rather than later in that period of time, but who knows? It’s been so long.
Also in the video game front, there’s going to be a remaster of the video game Dark Forces, which is still a Legends game basically. But it is interesting because it tells the story of this character, Kyle Katarn, pronunciation. Anyway, he defects from the Empire, joins the rebellion, and then infiltrates the Empire and finds out about the Dark Trooper Project. We saw Dark Troopers, of course, in the last three episodes of the season two of The Mandalorian, Moff Gideon’s robotic Dark Troopers, those guys. Yeah, it has that interesting link to something that was not too long ago brought into canon. So it’s interesting in that regard.
And then the last thing I’ll flag is that Matthew Vaughan, who according to the Hollywood Reporter story, his main directing thing they flagged was X- Men First Class, which is fine, is talking about very much wanting to do Star Wars, do the original trilogy, it sounds like, for a new generation and recast Luke and Leia and Vader and everybody basically.
And this is just his wishful thinking, basically, that the Hollywood Reporter turned into a story. And so yeah. Personally, I will say that I do hope that they recast Luke and Leia someday. They’ve already recast Han. As far as I’m concerned, I’m perfectly happy with Alden Ehrenreich, and I hope they do other stories with those characters while they can.
But as far as rebuilding or redoing the original trilogy movies, I don’t know if that’s necessary, but I’d love to hear what you think about that. Do you think that A, you would like to see Luke, Leia, and Han? We’ll just throw Han in there, why not? But the three main characters recast for a new generation of storytelling? And B, would you be open to them redoing the original trilogy with this new cast?
If you’re catching this on YouTube, hey, comments are right there. Would love to hear what you think. And if you’re listening in an audio platform, then please head over to the blog post for this show’s episode at sw7x7. Com and let me know what you think. And that is going to do it for our news roundup, what’s been percolating in the worlds of Star Wars over the last week and that is going to do it for this episode of the podcast.
It just remains for me to say thank you so much for joining me for it as always and may the Force be with you wherever in the world you may be. Star Wars.