This Week, In a Galaxy Far, Far Away: ‘Star Wars: The Phantom Menace’ Celebrates Early Anniversary, Gina Carano’s Lawsuit Thoughts, and Lots of Small Updates
Welcome back to “This Week, In a Galaxy Far, Far Away,” as we conclude what has been a rather strange week in Star Wars. We’ve received minor updates on many different projects, none of them really surprising, which made it kind of hard to pick a main topic this time. As always, if you enjoy these pieces and wanna share your thoughts, feel free to do so in the comments below! You’re also more than welcome to share with a friend.
A quick YouTube update before we move on. We had two shows this week, with new editions of The Timeline Show and SWNN Live! on Monday and Thursday, respectively. In the latter, Jay, Tyler, and Brian looked back on Revenge of the Sith, which turned out to be more topical than they originally thought. Plus, if you’re into games, you might be interested in checking out our own Jay Goodearl’s latest passion project, his own channel named “Good Games, Dude”.
Three Things That May Have Flown Casual
- Live-action general updates: According to Collider, The Acolyte is targeting a summer release window. If you’ve been reading “This Week, In a Galaxy Far, Far Away” long enough you might have felt the same “Well, duh” feeling I got when I saw the news. Still, someone had to come out and say it; I have a feeling it’s only a matter of weeks before Lucasfilm comes out and announces a release date for this one. Additionally, Andor had its final day of principal photography this week, according to Diego Luna’s emotional Instagram post (Stellan Skarsgård also had some nice words about it a few days prior). Plus, Dave Filoni didn’t say a peep about The Mandalorian & Grogu (which Bob Iger confirmed will not come out in 2025 like I hoped; Iger also announced a new partnership between Disney and Epic Games), except that he’s excited to see Jon Favreau directing the film (which is reportedly shooting in June). This happened during the Saturn Awards, where Lucasfilm won a few prizes.
- Animation updates: We’re now 10 days away from The Bad Batch season 3’s three-episode premiere, as unbelieveable as that sounds. The show revealed a brand-new clip focused on Crosshair this week. Young Jedi Adventures will also be wrapping up this week, and given some solid third-party viewership data, we should expect a season 2 renewal to be announced soon.
- Someone finally asked… Donald Glover about Lando. Seriously, what is going on with journalists on press tours lately? Every time Ewan McGregor is out in public, he gets asked by the press stuff like “Did you have the high ground?”, not to mention the 938 times he’s been asked about Obi-Wan Kenobi coming back (we decided months ago to stop covering those until something gets announced). But Donald Glover is announced last year as the writer of an upcoming Star Wars movie in which he’d also be reprising the role of Lando Calrissian, and only THR had the thought of asking about it? I was a bit disappointed by Glover’s answer: If you read carefully, he never says he’s even working on it at the moment. So what is going on here?
Star Wars Quote of the Week
“After two highly acclaimed seasons on The Mandalorian as Rebel ranger Cara Dune, Carano was terminated from her role as swiftly as her character’s peaceful home planet of Alderaan had been destroyed by the Death Star in an earlier Star Wars film.”
Believe it or not, that is actually a direct quote from the lawsuit Gina Carano and her Elon Musk-funded legal representation filed on Tuesday, claiming discrimination and wrongful termination by Disney and Lucasfilm over her exit from The Mandalorian and the since-canceled Rangers of the New Republic. That same filing also spends over a dozen pages complaining, through pasting many screenshots, about anonymous social media users asking Carano to take a stand in favor of Black Lives Matter and trans people.
Even putting aside the ridiculousness of Carano’s case, which (from my legal-ignorant point of view) seems to ignore the fact that Carano was simply not renewed for the third season of The Mandalorian, and that she hadn’t signed a contract for Rangers of the New Republic (Jon Favreau had verbally assured her she’d be one of the stars of the show, but it never went past that). Can that be considered a firing? According to Puck, if this is indeed a case where she was fired for her political opinions expressed online, there might be some base to the case given a California law that prohibits private companies (which are not subject to the First Amendment) from firing employees due to their political views. But that’s a big stretch, from where I’m standing.
Honestly, this just seems like a case where Gina Carano realized that starring in movies for The Daily Wire may not be as lucrative as she thought and is in need of some quick cash. Pair that with Elon Musk’s ambition to take down Disney in whichever way he can, and his announcement last year that he’d finance any lawsuit targeted at private companies who fired employees based on their Twitter activity, and she had a perfect avenue. She is asking for financial compensation in addition to being reinstated in her role as Cara Dune (seriously?), but in all honesty, it just seems like she hopes for the case to be settled outside of court (even though she demands a jury trial) and for Disney to pay her hush money. Will they do it? I highly doubt it.
As far as Star Wars is concerned, though, there was an interesting statement included in the lawsuit. Apparently, Favreau had promised Carano she’d be starring in future Star Wars shows and movies: “Carano had been told by Jon Favreau she was to be part of a series of new Star Wars movies based on the various Star Wars Disney+ series to be released in theaters in the near future, a group of movies which includes the recently announced movie based on The Mandalorian.”
They’re referring, of course, to The Mandalorian & Grogu. I don’t think Favreau had that movie planned that movie back in early 2021 when those conversations happened (which makes that last statement a bit of a head-scratcher, but I guess it’s technically not a lie), but it does signal that Favreau always had the ambition to take this to the big screen. At the time, they were probably thinking about Dave Filoni’s culmination event, which Kathleen Kennedy did say was happening back in December 2020 (in more vague terms). It was at least interesting to me because I thought their plans back then weren’t as well defined.
25 Years of Star Wars Prequels and that Empire Magazine Misdirect
Star Wars social media nearly exploded on Thursday after Empire Magazine posted a cryptic “Hello There” message, teasing a big Star Wars announcement on Friday, 4pm GMT. What could it possibly be? (Sidenote of sorts: the speculation of this being the announcement of Obi-Wan Kenobi season 2 drove me crazy, showing a complete misunderstanding of how these things work.)
This was always going to be a new cover reveal; that’s what Empire does. They print magazines. So what would be on the cover. We now know that it was a big celebration of 25 years of Star Wars prequels, but the (perhaps irresponsible) speculation that this would be our first look at The Acolyte always made sense to me. Theoretically, this show could be ready for release in May (though I think it will be something like July), right after The Bad Batch wraps, so now would be the time to start promoting it. Plus, there’s the Super Bowl angle…
I’m not sure if they actually knew exactly what they were doing, throwing a misdirect to get all eyes possible on their new issue, or how much they simply miscalculated the scope of their post. I don’t wanna be super cynical about this, because this is a 31-page story that took months to put together, and dozens of people to coordinate (it also involves a photoshoot with many actors from the prequel trilogy), so they clearly were very excited about it and wanted everyone else to feel the same.
At the same time, they’ve dropped some snippets online over the past couple of days, featuring some excerpts from their interviews with Hayden Christensen, Liam Neeson, Natalie Portman, Ewan McGregor, and more. Yet those links are still waiting on our private chat for someone to pick them up and write a story covering their statements. Why? Because there’s nothing new in them. How many times have we heard Ewan McGregor say that the Star Wars fandom now appreciates those movies because the people they were made for have now grown up? (To be fair, Empire didn’t publish that, he said it to Jimmy Kimmel recently.)
They did have one announcement tied to their coverage, though: The Phantom Menace will be returning to theaters on May 3, with an awesome-looking new poster. I’m actually curious how well it will do. (It’s going up against the Ryan Gosling-fronted The Fall Guy.) All speculation aside though, those Empire covers are pretty cool. The question is: Why do it so soon? The anniversary is not until May, but they revealed the whole thing on Feb. 9 and this is for the April issue, which hits the stands on Feb. 15 (what’s up with that?!) My guess is that they have bigger things planned for the next couple of months, from Deadpool to even The Acolyte, though I would guess we won’t be getting that until May/June.
What did you think of the latest edition of “This Week, In a Galaxy Far, Far Away”? Let me know your thoughts and suggestions down below in the comment section. You can also send them, or reach out with any information tips, directly via our Contact page.
Have a great week!
Miguel Fernández is a Spanish student that has movies as his second passion in life. His favorite movie of all time is The Lord of the Rings, but he is also a huge Star Wars fan. However, fantasy movies are not his only cup of tea, as movies from Scorsese, Fincher, Kubrick or Hitchcock have been an obsession for him since he started to understand the language of filmmaking. He is that guy who will watch a black and white movie, just because it is in black and white.
