Disney Will Debut Star Wars’ Phase 3 Slate In 2026

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Disney’s Star Wars is entering a new phase, its third major direction since Disney acquired the franchise in 2012. This change is happening now, with plans unfolding through 2026, and comes at a crucial time. Many fans are hoping this new approach will revitalize the series and recapture the excitement that has been missing.

Disney is significantly shifting how it approaches Star Wars, marking a new direction for the franchise since it bought Lucasfilm. Initially, Disney’s plan was straightforward: create more Star Wars movies. This first involved continuing the main Skywalker family story with films like The Force Awakens (2015), The Last Jedi (2017), and The Rise of Skywalker (2019), and also included standalone stories like Solo and Rogue One.

No matter how people feel about the more recent Star Wars movies, the older, pre-streaming approach was incredibly successful at the box office. The Force Awakens still holds the record for the highest domestic earnings, bringing in $936.6 million – a huge amount, especially considering it was over ten years ago.

The second phase of Star Wars storytelling started with The Mandalorian on Disney+ in late 2019, meaning it briefly ran alongside the first phase. This phase was marked by Disney+’s focus on streaming, shifting away from traditional movie theater releases and establishing Star Wars primarily as a streaming service.

Disney has created ten seasons of live-action Star Wars shows, and the quality has varied quite a bit. Many fans consider the series Andor, a spin-off from Rogue One, to be one of the best Star Wars projects ever made. However, shows like The Acolyte and The Book of Boba Fett haven’t been as well-received and may have negatively impacted the brand’s reputation.

While Marvel Studios continues to release films in theaters, the new direction for Star Wars relies almost entirely on Disney’s streaming service. Many fans aren’t enjoying this current era of Star Wars, as it means fewer theatrical releases and a lot of new TV shows being released at once.

This issue is particularly noticeable in stories that felt better suited for a cinematic release, such as the Obi-Wan Kenobi series. Many felt this series wasn’t very good, and the second duel between Obi-Wan and Darth Vader would have been more impactful on the big screen. It seems the current direction is largely a response to the past seven years of focusing on streaming content.

As a huge Star Wars fan, I’m really excited to hear that Lucasfilm, now with Dave Filoni and Lynwen Brennan leading the charge, is focusing on getting Star Wars back on the big screen! It sounds like Disney is also planning to make fewer TV shows, which was something that started being discussed earlier this year. It’s a shift I think a lot of us have been hoping for – seeing these stories told with the scope they deserve in theaters.

The plans for 2026 have been finalized: instead of a fourth season of The Mandalorian or a second season of Ahsoka, we’ll be getting a new series focused on The Mandalorian and Grogu this year. This is the only live-action Star Wars series scheduled for release in 2024.

Plans for the next phase of Star Wars films are shifting again. Lucasfilm, led by Kathleen Kennedy, had been letting directors and writers propose their own ideas for new movies. This approach resulted in projects like the upcoming film by Taika Waititi and Shawn Levy’s Star Wars: Starfighter, currently scheduled to be released on May 28, 2027.

But a recent report suggests that Filoni, now in charge of creative decisions for the franchise, may choose the stories he wants to tell and then work with directors to bring them to life.

This approach would be very similar to how Marvel Studios operates: they first decide on the overall plan and which projects to create, and then they find directors to work on them. For instance, two movies planned for 2026, Spider-Man: Brand New Day and Avengers: Doomsday, were always intended to be continuations of existing stories – the main question was just who would direct them.

Disney’s Star Wars is now entering its third phase, and it remains to be seen how their current approach will play out. So far, only two projects have moved forward enough to become actual movies: The Mandalorian & Grogu and Starfighter. Whether or not this strategy works will depend on which films ultimately get made.

Daisy Ridley is expected to return in a new Star Wars movie directed by Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy. This film will likely be the first of three planned by Simon Kinberg, though Dave Filoni will make the final decisions about the direction of the franchise, which has been running for 49 years, and its future success.

Will Star Wars Bounce Back?

With over six and a half years passing since the last Star Wars movie, there’s a lot riding on The Mandalorian & Grogu. This film is a major event for fans, as it brings the Star Wars saga back to the big screen.

The franchise isn’t as guaranteed to succeed at the box office as it used to be. When Disney released a film in the summer instead of December previously, it didn’t perform well, as seen with the movie Solo.

This movie is a big test for the studio: can a show that started as a streaming series become a major hit in movie theaters?

Fans clearly enjoy these characters, but it’s still uncertain whether that popularity will drive strong ticket sales when the movie opens – which is crucial, considering how expensive it was to make.

Further down the line, the 2027 film Starfighter, starring Ryan Gosling, is particularly interesting. It features completely original characters and a promising new story. However, because it isn’t connected to any existing franchise, its success at the box office is uncertain.

How well these two movies do, along with the direction Dave Filoni takes things next, will shape the future of Star Wars in the coming years. As live-action TV slows down, animated series might become the main way Star Wars stories are told on smaller screens.

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2026-03-26 09:36