Disney plans to make three more Star Wars spin-off movies

Once the Star Wars property fell into the hands of Disney, we can be sure to assume that Disney would be driving this big potential franchise machine into maximum capacity. They suddenly have this flood of ideas for the Star Wars property. Aside from the upcoming Star Wars: Episode 7, there's the planned TV series, one of them is the animated TV series Star Wars Rebels which is already set to be launched. But Disney has revealed that they are planning full-length spin-off movies for Star Wars as well, expanding the Star Wars universe into its literal definition. [hit the jump to continue]

Though the current focus is rightly on director J.J. Abrams’ highly anticipated sequel Star Wars: Episode VII as production is set to begin in earnest next week, Disney is also cognizant of the larger picture for its Star Wars franchise.  Sure we are already aware that Episode VII will be followed by Episode VIII and Episode IX, to complete this new planned sequel trilogy. But Disney and Lucasfilm are developing Star Wars spinoff films to pad their release schedule over the next decade.  Disney CEO Bob Iger has revealed that at least three spinoff movies are now planned to mine the sci-fi franchise over the next decade in addition to Episodes 7, 8, and 9. I assume that these would be stories outside the Skywalker family. 

Screenwriters Lawrence Kasdan (Empire Strikes Back) and Simon Kinberg (X-Men: Days of Future Past) have been working on the spinoff films for over a year, and the early rumor was that the standalone films would be a young Han Solo movie and a Boba Fett movie.  We’ve received no further confirmation on that front, and both Kasdan and Kinberg have had their hands full as of late so there’s no telling how far along these spinoff films are right now.  Kasdan took over scripting duties on Episode VII with Abrams late last summer and is currently in London fine-tuning the script ahead of production, and Kinberg has been working with Fox on the Days of Future Past sequel X-Men: Apocalypse as well as producing The Fantastic Four.

Disney has previously confirmed its plan to release a new Star Wars film every year starting in 2015, so if they’re to stick to that plan we would likely see the first spinoff movie sometime in 2016.  Again, we don’t know for certain what the spinoffs will be and how far along the scripts are, but it’s clear that Iger and Disney are eager to mine this Star Wars franchise for all it’s got.

I dont think it's much of a problem if they will be making more Star Wars movies, as long as it highlights new characters or characters that have not yet had their time on the spotlight. Having young tales of Han Solo and Boba Fett? That's a bad idea. The Young Anakin stories of the prequels is proof enough that this is such a bad idea to ruin something that already stands proudly with its integrity, no need to open some can of worms. We were better off not knowing what was under that Boba Fett helmet, we're better off thinking of Han Solo as this cool swashbuckling smuggler in his younger days; we dont need to see a badly made story of that. The silver lining here is that I'm sure Disney could hire better writers and concept ideas than rusty old George.