Star Wars is more than alive and well at Disney post-Lucasfilm acquisition, as proven today by confirmation of an AICN rumor report from yesterday suggesting a Yoda standalone film was a strong possibility.
The comments were made by Disney chief Bob Iger in an interview with CNBC earlier today. The interviewer asked Iger about the possibility of standalone Star Wars films and received a direct and informative answer in return.
“We are in fact working on a few stand-alone films,” Iger replied to the inquiry. “Larry Kasdan and Simon Kinberg are both working on films derived from great Star Wars characters that are not part of the overall saga. So we plan to make Star Wars 7, 8 and 9 over roughly a six-year period of time starting in 2015. But there are going to be a few other films released in that period of time, too.”
Star Wars Episode VII will be directed by J.J. Abrams and is scheduled for release in 2015 assuming Abrams’ hectic schedule doesn’t hold up the project. Per Iger’s remarks, that means we can expect three new trilogy films in 2015, 2017 and 2017. If in fact there are multiple Star Wars standalone films in development already, we’re looking at a Star Wars film per year – at minimum – with the first standalone film dropping in 2016.
Larry Kasdan has a close relationship with the original Star Wars trilogy having penned the screenplay for Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back and Star Wars: Return of the Jedi. If the AICN rumor pans out to be true and a Yoda-centric film is in the works, who better to steer the project than the man who helped originally give Yoda his unique “voice” on the page.
Iger also stated in the interview that Kasdan is consulting with J.J. Abrams on Star Wars Episode VII.
Simon Kinberg penned the screenplays for Sherlock Holmes and more recently X-Men: Days of Future Past.
You can watch the Iger interview from CNBC below, and potentially we’ll see an official announcement regarding the first Star Wars standalone flick by year’s end.
