Star Wars: Starfighter, the second installment of the classic science-fiction franchise’s planned return to the big screen, has begun production today.
Set five years after Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker, Starfighter will star Ryan Gosling as a New Republic fighter pilot who has to protect a young child (relative newcomer Flynn Gray) from some unspecified danger in the galaxy far, far away.
The Roses director Shawn Levy is piloting Starfighter with a script by This Is Where I Leave You screenwriter Jonathan Tropper.
Mia Goth and Matt Smith have already been announced as being in the cast. Today’s announcement adds Aaron Pierre, Simon Bird, Jamael Westman, Daniel Ings and Amy Adams to the film’s lineup.
In a released statement, Levy said –
I feel a profound sense of excitement and honor as we begin production on Star Wars: Starfighter. From the day Kathy Kennedy called me up, inviting me to develop an original adventure in this incredible Star Wars galaxy, this experience has been a dream come true, creatively and personally. Star Wars shaped my sense of what story can do, how characters and cinematic moments can live with us forever. To join this storytelling galaxy with such brilliant collaborators onscreen and off, is the thrill of a lifetime.
The Star Wars franchise has had a long struggle getting back to theatrical screens. Under the short-lived Bob Chapek administration at Disney, Lucasfilm was under orders to produce as much content as possible for the company’s new streaming service, Disney+. The success of the first of these, the Jon Favreau-produced The Mandalorian, proved such a success that the company doubled down on streaming output. It is only more recently that Lucasfilm has swung its focus back to getting Star Wars stories back into movie theaters. Although the company had developed and then passed on a number of potential projects, the first film in their back-to-theaters push is ironically a spinoff of The Mandalorian, Star Wars: The Mandalorian And Grogu. That film is currently targeted for a May 2026 release.
Starfighter was officially announced as going into production this past April during the Star Wars Celebration Japan fan gathering.
Star Wars: Starfighter is set for a May 2027 release, as part of the franchise’s fiftieth anniversary celebrations.
