While recent reports claimed that as many as nine films in the Star Wars universe could be in development, it appears spinoff entries have been put on hold after Solo: A Star Wars Story failed to meet Disney and Lucasfilm's box office expectations.
Sources with knowledge of the companies' plans say that Lucasfilm has decided to put plans for more A Star Wars Story films on hold. The company is allegedly focusing on instead on Star Wars: Episode IX and what the next trilogy will be after that film.
Star Wars Spinoffs Put On Hold
According to Collider's sources, the rumored Obi-Wan Kenobi standalone film was in active development, but those who were working on the movie are no longer involved. It was also recently reported that Logan writer and director James Mangold was going to work on a standalone film centered on bounty hunter Boba Fett, but that was before Solo premiered.
Solo: A Star Wars Story's Disappointing Box Office Performance
The news comes in the wake of a disappointing launch for Solo, a standalone film centered on a much younger Han Solo and Chewbacca. It is only the second film from the A Star Wars Story spinoff series, receiving mixed-to-positive reviews alongside lukewarm ticket sales. To be clear, Solo's box office performance isn't that bad by itself — but compared with Rogue One, the first film in the A Star Wars Story series, it performed much worse and probably wasn't the "event" Lucasfilm and Disney had expected it to be, considering, after all, that its Star Wars branding alone should've buoyed it through a potential downfall.
Many factors could have contributed to the film's lukewarm reception, both in terms of critical praise and box office returns. For starters, it was released just five months after The Last Jedi premiered in theaters, and it closely followed other box office knockouts such as Avengers: Infinity War and Deadpool 2. It's interesting to think how differently things could have gone had the film been released this coming December instead.
It's also possible that Solo's content just isn't as compelling as the other Star Wars films. Here's Forbes's review:
"Solo might be, at heart, a cynical cash-grab, but it's undeniably entertaining. The film expands the Star Wars universe, showing a poverty-stricken world with a hard edge, but it comes loaded with a barrage of unnecessary details about Han's life, and slightly cringy fan service."
The fate of A Star Wars Story, and for that matter all planned spinoffs in the series, is unknown.
