Taika Waititi is taking the Star Wars franchise in a new direction.
The Thor: Love and Thunder director is set to direct and write the newest Star Wars film, but don't expect an appearance from the usual characters. Instead, Taika is coming up with a whole new saga that stands apart from the original films by George Lucas.
"Look, I think for the Star Wars universe to expand, it has to expand," he recently told Total Film. "I don't think that I'm any use in the Star Wars universe making a film where everyone's like, 'Oh great, well that's the blueprints to the Millennium Falcon, ah that's Chewbacca's grandmother.'"
Of course, like the rest of us, Taika thinks the original concepts are great. But, he said, "I would like to take something new and create some new characters and just expand the world, otherwise it feels like it's a very small story."
Although this seems like a controversial move for a franchise as popular as Star Wars, Taika has the full support of Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy.
"We need to create a whole new saga," Kathleen told Total Film in a separate interview said, later adding, "As we leave the saga, we have all this great, exciting work happening on the television side that informs so much about where we're going. We want to be very intentional about that."
Lucasfilms has already started to stray from the originals with their Disney+ shows, such as The Mandalorian and Obi-Wan, which took inspiration from the first three installments, while also creating new lore.
And Lucasfilm plans to continue exploring the vast galaxy in other shows with the help of talented filmmakers like Taiki and Jon Favreau. As Kathleen previously told Vanity Fair, "We put the basic guardrails around what makes something Star Wars, those fundamental values inherent in Star Wars, that sense of place, the deeper meanings around selflessness, selfishness and the mythology that George created. Then we pretty much leave them to their own devices and try to support that."
There are a number of Star Wars shows in production, including Ahsoka, The Acolyte and Andor. For more details on what to expect, read our story on Lucasfilms' plans for the future here.