Yes, you read that right. Every. Year. The House of Mouse outlined their plans for the recently acquired Star Wars franchise at CinemaCon in Las Vegas yesterday, revealing how they plan on getting bang for their buck on the investment, and how we the public can expect to be regularly chewing on some Jedi action for the foreseeable.
Starting with the 2015's Star Wars: Episode VII, Disney's plan is to alternate between ongoing 'Episodes' movies and standalone films every year, so aside from whatever they have planned for the overall universe and continuing saga we can expect some spin-offs that hopefully won't stray into Episode I territory. Rumours are already circulating about Yoda, Boba Fett and a young Han Solo getting the standalone treatment (which Liam Hemsworth looked like he was making an open audition for at the MTV Movie Awards on Sunday, no? Hipster Han anyone?), while J.J. Abrams is already at work on Episode VII and getting the band back together with the expected return of Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford.
Empire Strikes Back screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan and X-Men: First Class screenwriter Simon Kinberg have already been tinkering away on not only treatments for the new trilogy, but reportedly the two are developing the standalone films as well. Is this going to be like The Hobbit, where they stumble onto an idea and then decide 'sure let's just throw all the footage out there as three movies' or will we get a decent turn out? We'll have to wait and see. It's a massive claim and commitment to make, but if any studio can back it up, financially at the very least, it's Disney.
