Jon Watts Takes the Ungreenlit Skywalker Film at Lucasfilm

Jon Watts is attached to direct the first film in a new Star Wars trilogy, a Skywalker-saga chapter Disney has not greenlit. Simon Kinberg is writing the three films, Daisy Ridley’s Rey is expected in some capacity, and Lucasfilm had no comment on September 26, 2026, when the hire landed in the trades.

The job is a bet, not a start date. Watts left Tom Holland’s Spider-Man series before this summer’s Brand New Day, and the last live-action Star Wars film, The Mandalorian and Grogu, took in $345.8 million worldwide against a $165 million budget.

A Director Hire Without a Greenlight

Studio sources described the Kinberg films as the next chapter of the Skywalker Saga, the nine numbered episodes that run from The Phantom Menace through The Rise of Skywalker. In that numbering the next one would be Episode X. Lucasfilm has not announced that title, and parent company Disney has not yet been greenlit the picture.

The same sources said it is the Star Wars feature furthest along after Star Wars: Starfighter, Shawn Levy’s Ryan Gosling vehicle, which is already in post-production. Watts is attached to the first installment only. Kinberg is writing the trilogy and is also producing.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The director: Watts, who made Holland’s first three Spider-Man films and co-created Skeleton Crew, is attached to film one.
• The writer: Kinberg has been on the trilogy since a November 2024 hire to write and produce.
• Rey: Ridley would appear in some capacity; Lucasfilm has not said as what.
• The slate: Starfighter remains the next Star Wars film dated for theaters.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• A 2027 shoot: Early reports say Lucasfilm hopes cameras roll as soon as next year; Disney has not approved production.
• New leads: Those reports also say the studio is looking at little-known male and female leads, with Ridley in a smaller part that could grow.
• New Jedi Order: The Ridley film with director Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy is said in those reports to have been set aside; Lucasfilm has not said so.
• Finn and Poe: John Boyega and Oscar Isaac’s involvement is unknown.

That gap between an attachment and a camera is the story. Lucasfilm has spent years putting names on Star Wars movies that never reached a set, and this one still needs a yes from Disney before Watts is directing anything but meetings.

Watts Walked Off Spider-Man After Calling Himself Out of Steam

Marvel hired Watts off the indie thriller Cop Car to restart Spider-Man with Holland. He delivered Spider-Man: Homecoming in 2017, Spider-Man: Far From Home in 2019, and Spider-Man: No Way Home in 2021, the last of which took in $1.92 billion worldwide for No Way Home. He had been in line for Marvel’s Fantastic Four reboot, then told Marvel he could not do it at the level he wanted.

I knew I didn’t have what it would’ve taken to make that movie great. I was just out of steam, so I just needed to take some time to recover.

Jon Watts, director, speaking to interviewer Steven Weintraub

Destin Daniel Cretton directed Spider-Man: Brand New Day, which opened in the United States on July 31, 2026, and passed No Way Home to become the highest-grossing Spider-Man film. Watts said he talked with that team only at the very start, then stepped back. Brand New Day is the smash he did not make. Star Wars is the franchise he is being asked to steady instead.

He already has a Lucasfilm relationship. Watts and Christopher Ford created Skeleton Crew, the 2024 Disney+ adventure with Jude Law, and Watts directed the premiere and the finale. The show drew praise and a smaller audience than the Mandalorian shows, and the Skeleton Crew series premiere on StarWars.com still reads like an Amblin riff more than a saga reset. In 2024 he also signed a first-look feature deal with Walt Disney Studios through his Freshman Year banner with producer Dianne McGunigle.

His last theatrical feature was Wolfs, the George Clooney and Brad Pitt Apple comedy that stumbled in release and teased a sequel that never arrived. The Spider-Man grosses are why Disney can live with that miss. They are also why this hire looks like insurance.

THE THEATRICAL GAP WATTS IS BEING HIRED TO CLOSE

No Way Home is the number Lucasfilm is buying. The Mandalorian and Grogu is the number it is trying to leave behind.

Simon Kinberg’s Long Path Back to Skywalker

Kinberg is the other half of the wager, and he is the half that split the reaction. He co-created Star Wars Rebels with Dave Filoni and Carrie Beck, ran from 2014 to 2018, and consulted on The Force Awakens. Kathleen Kennedy, then Lucasfilm’s president, put him in a 2012 brain trust with Michael Arndt and Lawrence Kasdan on early ideas for Disney’s first three Star Wars films, work that was largely dropped after The Force Awakens. In 2018 he and James Mangold were hired for a Boba Fett feature that never turned in a full script and died after Solo: A Star Wars Story underperformed.

Kennedy brought him back in November 2024 to write and produce a new trilogy. At the time, people inside Lucasfilm and Disney were surprised the deal became public, because the films were still in deep development. Industry tallies put his work as a screenwriter at more than $3.3 billion worldwide, from Mr. & Mrs. Smith onward, and he is known for talking executives through franchise risk. Kennedy later said he delivered one version, then reworked the story into a treatment of about 70 pages.

The counterweight is public. Dark Phoenix, his 2019 X-Men directing debut, was the lowest-grossing and worst-reviewed film in that series to that point. He produced The New Mutants, which Disney dumped as a pandemic wide release. The 355, his 2022 spy film with Jessica Chastain, grossed $18.9 million worldwide. He is also producing a Star Trek film for Paramount and Edgar Wright’s The Running Man, which is a lot of franchise work to stack against three Star Wars scripts.

In 2024 the assignment was described internally as a new saga with new characters, not Episodes X through XII. The September 2026 reporting folds the same work into the Skywalker family and puts Rey in the frame. That shift is the tell. Lucasfilm is no longer selling a clean break from The Rise of Skywalker. It is selling a continuation, with a writer who already knows how to pitch a sequel to a room that wants the family name on the poster.

Starfighter Locks May 28, 2027

Levy’s film is the one with a date, a cast, and footage in the can. Principal photography began on August 28, 2025, in the United Kingdom, moved through Sardinia, and wrapped in December. Jonathan Tropper wrote it. Ryan Gosling leads a cast that includes Flynn Gray, Matt Smith, Mia Goth, Aaron Pierre, Simon Bird, Jamael Westman, Daniel Ings, and Amy Adams. Claudio Miranda, who shot Top Gun: Maverick, was the cinematographer.

Lucasfilm set a May 28, 2027 theatrical date, in the 50th anniversary window of the original Star Wars, which opened on May 25, 1977. Levy has called it a standalone, not a prequel or a sequel, set several years after The Rise of Skywalker. Tropper has said they wanted a “simpler movie,” one that does not ask the audience to keep the Empire, the First Order, the Resistance, and the Skywalker bloodlines in their heads at once.

Watts and Kinberg have the opposite brief: put the saga back at the center. They cannot get there until Starfighter clears the anniversary weekend, and they cannot get there if Starfighter fails. The Mandalorian and Grogu opened in the United States on May 22, 2026, to $81.7 million over three days and $98.1 million over four, then finished with $177.7 million in North America and $345.8 million worldwide. It is the lowest-grossing live-action Star Wars film. Disney commercial chief Josh D’Amaro said it did not meet box-office expectations, while arguing the spend still fed retail, parks, and games.

HOW THE SAGA GOT FROM A FINALE TO A HIRE

1. December 20, 2019: The Rise of Skywalker closes the numbered Skywalker films at $1.077 billion worldwide.
2. November 2024: Kennedy hires Kinberg to write and produce a new trilogy.
3. May 22, 2026: The Mandalorian and Grogu opens and becomes the lowest-grossing live-action Star Wars film.
4. July 31, 2026: Spider-Man: Brand New Day opens without Watts and later passes No Way Home.
5. September 26, 2026: Watts is attached to Kinberg’s first film; Disney still withholds a greenlight.
6. May 28, 2027: Starfighter is due in theaters, timed to the original film’s 50th anniversary year.

Until that Levy date is in the books, Watts is directing a slot, not a movie. The safer-hands read on Watts and Kinberg only matters if Starfighter gives Lucasfilm permission to spend like a saga again.

What Happens to Daisy Ridley’s Jedi Order Movie?

Ridley has been in this waiting room before. At Star Wars Celebration in 2023, Lucasfilm unveiled new Star Wars films announced in 2023, including a project with Obaid-Chinoy in which Ridley would return as Rey, set 15 years after The Rise of Skywalker, rebuilding the Jedi Order. Damon Lindelof and Justin Britt-Gibson were on the script, then Steven Knight, then George Nolfi. Kennedy and Filoni were still describing that film as in development at Celebration in 2025, alongside work from James Mangold, Taika Waititi, and Kinberg.

The Watts film does not name Ridley as the lead. Trade reporting on the Kinberg trilogy says only that Rey appears in some capacity. Early reports go further and cast her as a Jedi Master in a smaller role around new, unknown leads, with a chance to grow in later chapters. If that version is right, Ridley is the bridge, not the engine. If the Obaid-Chinoy film is truly set aside, a Celebration stage promise from 2023 has been folded into someone else’s trilogy.

That is a familiar Lucasfilm pattern, and it is why the Ridley line is doing so much work. A returning face makes Episode X feel like a continuation. A new lead makes it feel like what Kinberg was hired to write in 2024. The studio is trying to have both, on a movie that still cannot get a greenlight.

Lucasfilm Has Announced More Films Than It Has Shot

Watts is being sold as a reliable choice for a company that has burned through directors. The list of Star Wars features announced and not released is now part of the job description. Each name below was public. None of them is the film Disney just declined to greenlight.

THE QUEUE WATTS JUST JUMPED

• Rogue Squadron: Patty Jenkins was attached to a fighter-pilot film that never reached production.
• Taika Waititi’s film: Still cited as in some form of development years after the first announcement.
• Lando: Donald Glover’s Calrissian movie remains unmade.
• New Jedi Order: Obaid-Chinoy’s Ridley film cycled writers for three years and now sits in the same fog as the Watts hire.
• Dave Filoni’s film: The chief creative officer’s own feature has been on the board since 2023 without a date.

Rian Johnson was once promised his own trilogy. David Benioff and D.B. Weiss had one too. Mangold moved from Boba Fett to other Star Wars talk and still has no released film in the series. The point of hiring Watts is not mystery. He has already finished three giant studio movies on time and made money on the third at a scale Star Wars has not touched since 2019.

The objection that followed the news was less about Watts than about Kinberg, and less about craft than about Dark Phoenix. That fight is fair and also incomplete. Kinberg’s Rebels run is why Filoni can live with him. Watts’s Spider-Man run is why Disney can live with Kinberg. Together they look like people who will not try to blow up the house. After The Last Jedi’s split, The Rise of Skywalker’s course-correction, and a seven-year hole in numbered episodes, that is the bet Lucasfilm is placing.

It still has to shoot the movie. Starfighter arrives first, on a weekend built to celebrate a film from 1977, and Watts’s attachment does not move that date. If Levy’s standalone works, the Skywalker wager gets a path. If it does not, an ungreenlit Episode X will look like what so many of these announcements became, a name on a slate and then a quiet fade.