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Shawn Levy hopes to deliver 'visual spectacle' & 'wish fulfillment' with mystery 'Star Wars' project
The director is still in "early development" on the film, but wants to capture the wonder and heart of his previous features.
Shawn Levy currently has his hands full in the Marvel sandbox with Deadpool 3, but he won't have much respite from large-scale franchise filmmaking once production wraps on Wade Wilson's introduction to the MCU. Last month, we learned that the prolific director/producer behind Free Guy and The Adam Project had joined forces with Lucasfilm for a mystery feature set within the Star Wars universe. Levy confirmed this directly to SYFY WIRE during a recent look-back at Night at the Museum for the movie's 16th anniversary.
"We’re in pretty early development still, but my goal is to make a Star Wars movie that is like a lot of my movies, which is visual spectacle and a healthy dose of wish fulfillment, levity, and big heart," he told us on a phone call over Zoom.
While the director couldn't give up any more teasers, he did voice his gratitude for the prolific career he's enjoyed since the commercial success of 2002's Big Fat Liar (itself a love letter to making movies). "If you had told me when I was making Big Fat Liar that I would eventually be making Deadpool and Star Wars, I would’ve said, ‘Are you kidding me?! That’s a fantasy, not a goal.’ So the fact that I’m getting to paint on these big, rich canvasses, it’s thrilling to me. I don’t ever for a day take it for granted or feel complacent about it."
Even without these massive studio properties on the horizon, Levy boasts a jam-packed film and television roster under his 21 Laps Entertainment banner, which produces a multitude of high-profile genre offerings like Stranger Things, Shadow and Bone, Love and Monsters, Lost Ollie, and Night at the Museum: Kahmunrah Rises Again, a Real Steel TV show, and a sequel to Free Guy.
Levy's untitled film is among several theatrical endeavors Lucasfilm green-lit since The Rise of Skywalker opened in theaters nearly three years ago. Taika Waititi (he'll direct from a script he's writing with Last Night in Soho writer, Krysty Wilson-Cairns), Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy (working off a screenplay from Watchmen's Damon Lindelof), and MCU architect Kevin Feige (collaborating with Avengers: Secret Wars writer, Michael Waldron) have all been confirmed to be working on a continuation of the galaxy far, far away on the big screen. Wonder Woman director Patty Jenkins was in active development on a Rogue Squadron outing before it was removed from Disney's release schedule in September.
Since 2019, the live-action side of Star Wars has enjoyed much success on the small screen with a number of original series on Disney+ like The Mandalorian, The Book of Boba Fett, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and, most recently, Andor. Upcoming titles for the streaming platform include Ahsoka (a Mandalorian spinoff centered around Rosario Dawson's Ahsoka Tano), The Acolyte (a murder-mystery set during the era of the High Republic) and Skeleton Crew (an Amblin-inspired outing from Spider-Man director, Jon Watts).
Looking for more high-concept sci-fi? Check out SYFY's Battlestar Galactica, streaming now on Peacock. Also keep an eye out for SYFY's new original series The Ark, which debuts in early 2023.
