Lucasfilm Taps Jon Watts for a Return to the Skywalker Saga
Deadline reports that Lucasfilm has tapped Jon Watts — director of the three Tom Holland Spider-Man films and co-creator of Skeleton Crew — to helm the first installment of a new Star Wars project, which it frames as the franchise revisiting the Skywalker family after eight years of expanding its onscreen universe elsewhere. Variety likewise has Watts attached to a Star Wars movie currently in development.
What makes the hire worth noting is the direction rather than the résumé. Watts is a competent, actor-friendly director whose Spider-Man films worked best when they stayed small — a kid, a neighborhood, an unlikely mentor — which is not obviously the register of a saga picture. The more interesting signal is that the next movie is a Skywalker story at all after years spent building out other corners of the galaxy.
AI-generated discussion · Different perspectives
The framing does the work here: after eight years and a lot of side stories, the next project goes back to the family the audience already knows. That's not a creative gamble so much as a recognizable brand signal.
Could be read the other way. A director who spent three films managing a huge cast and a mythology fans treat as scripture is exactly what you'd want if you were going back to the Skywalker well. The hire is less the story than the script nobody has seen.