Why Lucasfilm Entrusted Simon Kinberg to Pilot the Next ‘Star Wars’ Movies

When news broke on Thursday that Simon Kinberg — best known for being a writer, producer, director or all of the above on much of the “X-Men” franchise — had been hired by Lucasfilm to write and produce a new “Star Wars” trilogy, it came as a surprise to many executives at Lucasfilm and Disney. The project is considered internally to be in deep development and not nearly ready to be made public.

There was also some surprise within the wider industry that Lucasfilm had turned to Kinberg as the newest steward of “Star Wars” on the big screen. According to multiple industry sources with experience working in the franchise space, Kinberg is seen on one level as a sensible and safe choice. Starting with 2005’s “XXX: State of the Union” and “Mr. and Mrs. Smith,” his films as a screenwriter have grossed more than $3.3 billion worldwide. Beyond the “X-Men” films, he’s also produced “Cinderella,” “The Martian” and Kenneth Branagh’s three Hercule Poirot films, all to ample success. He’s said to understand how to talk to film executives about franchise filmmaking in a way that allays their concerns about creative decisions affecting the costly bottom line for these kinds of projects.

On another level, however, Kinberg is regarded by some as a considerably risky bet. “Dark Phoenix,” his directorial debut in 2019, was the lowest-grossing and the worst-reviewed film in the “X-Men” franchise to that point. Kinberg also produced the final “X-Men” movie, “The New Mutants,” which was delayed so frequently — due to an inauspicious brew of creative concerns and Disney’s acquisition of 20th Century Fox — that the film wound up getting dumped as the first major wide release during the pandemic. Now that “X-Men” is firmly under the auspices of Marvel Studios, Kinberg has labored to recreate his earlier success. His next (and, to date, last) effort as a director, 2022’s spy thriller “The 355” with Jessica Chastain, was a financial disaster, grossing just $18.9 million worldwide.

Lucasfilm, meanwhile, has faced substantial difficulty launching a comprehensive film slate following 2019’s “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker”; to date, only “The Mandalorian & Grogu,” a spin-off of the popular Disney+ series “The Mandalorian,” has received an official greenlight. So given Kinberg’s recent track record, what would lead Lucasfilm to enlist him to pilot a new fleet of “Star Wars” movies?

One major factor, says one source with knowledge of the deal, is Kinberg’s continuing creative relationship with Lucasfilm creative executive Carrie Beck and chief creative officer Dave Filoni, who both worked with Kinberg on the well-regarded 2014-2018 animated series “Star Wars Rebels.” Lucasfilm chief Kathleen Kennedy, however, was the one who made the outreach to Kinberg about making a live-action “Star Wars” movie. She’d already brought him into the “Star Wars” fold, once in 2012 as part of a brain trust with screenwriters Michael Arndt and Lawrence Kasdan to map out early ideas for Disney’s first three “Star Wars” movies — work that was largely discarded after 2015’s “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.” Kinberg was tapped again in 2018 to write a standalone Boba Fett feature with director James Mangold, but they were never able to submit a full script. The box office failure of “Solo: A Star Wars Story” that year coupled with Disney’s new mandate to create content for its upcoming streaming service caused Kennedy to shift the studio’s “Star Wars” strategy away from standalone movies. The Boba Fett film was canceled just months after Mangold and Kinberg were hired.

Studio insiders also stress that, while media reports have claimed that Kinberg’s “Star Wars” movies will continue the Skywalker Saga as Episodes X, XI and XII, the films are in their most nascent stage. Kinberg’s efforts are meant to create a new saga, but as is the case with virtually all script development, specific plot details and characters are light years away from taking their final shape, let alone arrive in theaters.

Kinberg is also already committed to helping revive another celebrated sci-fi franchise that has hit a fallow period, signing on to produce what Paramount’s aims will be its next “Star Trek” movie, directed by Toby Haynes and written by Seth Grahame-Smith. And Kinberg is producing Edgar Wright’s “The Running Man” with Glen Powell, which Paramount has slated for November 2025. Given the abundant time and commitment it takes to mount one “Star Wars” movie, let alone three, whatever Kinberg’s “Star Wars” movies wind up being, they are likely far, far away into the future.

Forget the Death Star, the most coveted weapon in the Star Wars movie arsenal is the character of Rey Skywalker.

Since the Nov. 7 reveal that Simon Kinberg had signed on to develop and write and produce a new Star Wars trilogy for Lucasfilm and Disney, debate has focused on whether or not it would be a continuation of the so-called nine-film Skywalker Saga, tying it to the legacy of Luke Skywalker, Darth Vader and storylines first laid out by George Lucas in 1977. The reason for the debate is that the new, hoped-for trilogy would feature Rey in some form or fashion.

Some fans have expressed criticism that Lucasfilm would return to the well to make “episodes,” as they are called, beyond the nine movies that comprise the Skywalker story, which had been billed as concluding with 2019’s Star Wars: Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker. That film grossed $1.077 billion globally but also wasn’t received well by much of the fanbase (it received a B+ grade from audiences polled by CinemaScore and a 51 percent critics tally at Rotten Tomatoes).

But Rey, the scavenger-turned-Jedi played by Daisy Ridley in the last three episode movies, is key to the franchise’s next turn. That potentially puts Kinberg’s trilogy story development, as early in its conceptual stages as it may be, on a collision course with the Rey standalone movie that is actively in the works with director Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy.

That feature, revealed with fanfare in April 2023 at Star Wars Celebration in London, is to star Ridley and could have already been in production were it not for some unanticipated headwinds, with writers rotating around more than R2-D2’s chrome dome. A new writer search is underway so it’s unclear when that one would go.

Perhaps that is why Lucasfilm was receptive to Kinberg’s multi-story pitch. Anything to move Rey forward. But it does engender rumors in the Star Wars underground of filmmakers jostling for characters. (Ridley, for her part, recently told The Hollywood Reporter, “I feel like the new one/new ones will be so interesting. Time has passed and a lot has changed for me, personally, so it’ll be interesting to come back to someone who I know so well, but in such a different moment.”)

While insiders dispute the notion that there is a battle for Rey, there definitely is internal deliberation within Lucasfilm as to what do with the heir to Skywalker next. “She is the most valuable cinematic asset, in some ways maybe the only one, Star Wars has right now,” one source close to the franchise tells THR. (Pedro Pascal’s Mandalorian and the Yoda-like Grogu are Disney+ creations and will have their big-screen power tested with a feature directed by Jon Favreau, releasing in 2026.)

According to sources, Rey is set to play a role in several movies that are being developed, although which ones remains unclear.

Star Wars movie development has been under scrutiny for several years with Lucasfilm head Kathleen Kennedy taking fire for not developing meaningful characters beyond those first created by Lucas prior to the sale to Disney in 2012 for $4 billion. And if the franchise looks forward in its canon timeline, all those beloved characters — Luke, Leia, Vader, Obi-Wan, Yoda and Han — are dead or had their storylines wrapped in prequels or spinoffs. Rey, created in the post-Lucas era, is arguably the only entity with currency on the big screen now. “The closet is a little bare,” says another source.

What the Kinberg hiring lays bare is that development of movies at the company remains its own unique ecosystem in Hollywood. There are numerous Star Wars movies being developed that overlap characters or timelines. They are not related but whatever one were to come out first, could, in a domino effect, then impact the ones after it. (James Mangold’s “Dawn of the Jedi” movie that takes places long before the Skywalkers may be one of the exceptions.)

Some Lucasfilm directors are aware of what others are working on while others are not. For instance, Taika Waititi is working on a Star Wars movie, Shawn Levy has a feature project in the works and Donald Glover’s Lando idea has moved over development from the TV to the film side of Lucasfilm. A Rogue Squadron project is also still in development as a feature.

“It’s a different way of development,” says another insider familiar with the company’s way of working. “There’s so much parallel work going on.”

It also points to the unique nature of Star Wars. To fans, and in this case filmmakers and producers, it is not a brand or a franchise, but something akin to a religion. Unlike Marvel or DC, with decades of stories propelling them forward, or even Harry Potter, with seven fleshed out books, Star Wars at its core has been the original George Lucas movies. And nothing has been codified or been made more canonical in modern times than those three movies. To filmmakers and executives, the first trilogy is the Old Testament.

“You’re being asked to create the new New Testament,” adds one source who worked on previous the movies. “And no one can agree on anything and there’s a lot of second guessing about meanings.”

Another source familiar with the process is more business-minded, noting, “Star Wars is a nostalgia-based enterprise and they are running out of ways to create nostalgia.”

The television side doesn’t appear to have these problems. As several insiders note, that arm has a lot more freedom to expand Lucas’ universe, which is why there’s been a varied slate that runs, for better or worse in the eyes of fans, the gamut from Andor (season two arrives next April) to The Acolyte (not getting a season two), as well as a corner for Ahsoka creator Dave Filoni, the chief creative officer at Lucasfilm.

Adds an insider, “To make standalone movies or continuing the Skywalker Saga in any form is a fundamental question the company faces as it tries to move forward.”