The magic of Star Wars is alive and well as Star Wars Celebration Japan — the 16th such gathering — began on Friday (local time). And, of course, Rotten Tomatoes is here to see all the presentations for the upcoming movies and TV shows. And as we’ve done with the last several Celebrations, we’re bringing you the vibes, news, and reactions. From Ryan Gosling to Industrial Light & Magic to The Mandalorian & Grogu, take a look below to see what’s transpired so far.
(Photo by Christopher Jue/Getty Images)
Although the opening panel of the weekend was meant to showcase The Mandalorian & Grogu, Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy and chief creative officer Dave Filoni took to the stage to present some details about the next film after Mando & Grogu. The duo welcomed director Shawn Levy to the stage, who mentioned he and Kennedy were chatting about a potential film for years.
“In 2022 I got a call and she said, ‘Let’s do it.’ We started [working] with screenwriter Jonathan Tropper,” he explained. At that time, the story was wide open and could take place anywhere in the Star Wars timeline. But then the director added a bombshell: “This is no longer a Star Wars movie in development. We’re making it this Fall.”
“I can’t tell you too much because anything I say, you will run with it,” he continued. “This is a standalone adventure set a few years after events of Episode IX. What could that mean?”
“We won’t say what that means,” Filoni added, “There are so many rumors and you want to set the record straight.”
Levy admitted he’s read some of the wild fan theories online. “Most of it is very inaccurate,” he said. “One thing I need to dispel is that it would star Ryan Gosling. So, today, I wanted to tell you that rumor is 100 percent true.”
Gosling joined the group on stage, accompanied by a photo of his childhood Empire Strikes Back sheets provided by his mother. “Yes, she still has them,” the actor revealed. “As you can see from the picture, I was dreaming about Star Wars before I saw the film. It framed my idea of what a movie was.”
Turning his attention to his movie with Levy, titled Star Wars: Starfighter, Gosling said, “This script is so good with so many great original characters. There’s not a more perfect filmmaker for this particular story than Shawn.”
The director again made clear the film, which will be set a few years after Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, is a standalone film — not a sequel or prequel to another tale. “It’s a new adventure set in a period of time we haven’t seen on screen yet. It features a group of all-new characters,” he said.
Starfighter is currently scheduled for release on May 28, 2027.
Kennedy also made a quick reference to the other films still in development: James Mangold‘s tale of the first human to access the Force, Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy‘s film with Daisy Ridley returning as Rey, Taika Waititi‘s long-gestating project, Filoni’s feature debut, and Simon Kinberg‘s film trilogy.
(Photo by Tomohiro Ohsumi/Getty Images)
Kennedy and Filoni remained on stage to discuss next year’s The Mandalorian & Grogu with director Jon Favreau and stars Pedro Pascal and Sigourney Weaver joining them. Asked how Favreau and Filoni plot out the adventures of Din Djarin and his Force-sensitive adopted son, Filoni said, “We have a bunch of action figures and we spread them on the floor. I’m usually the bad guy and Jon is the good guys.”
“He’s like the older brother who only lets me play with certain toys,” Favreau quipped. “It feels like all the things we did when were younger. It’s the funnest job you can imagine.”
Above them, a slide show revealed some shots from the film, including Din Djarin and Grogu walking with Star Wars Rebels favorite Zeb on a New Republic landing field and an interior of an AT-AT (or Imperial Walker if you prefer). One photo featured Filoni at the AT-AT controls.
“I won’t lie, it was great,” he said.
“These guys never grew up,” Kennedy joked.
According to Favreau, the film’s sets are more detailed than ever as it was shot for IMAX screens. The photos definitely offer that level of detail.
Asked if he knew Star Wars fans would connect with Djarin, Pascal said “Yes.” He went on to tell a story of how Favreau and Filoni first sold him on the show before he even knew he was going to play the title character.
Weaver, meanwhile, said she “got lucky” by being invited to have a Zoom chat with Favreau and Filoni. She admitted to the audience that she had not watched The Mandalorian prior to that call, though. “[They] gave me an assignment to watch it … I fell in love with all the characters, but especially [Pedro]. And Grogu stole my heart. I just saw him in the green room. He looked a little nervous, but I think he’d like to come out here.”
Favreau brought one of the more advanced Grogu puppets onto stage, who is now mostly self-contained but very expressive. Other creatures also appeared: a pair of large BD-style droids with an Anzellan (Babu Frik’s species) attached to one. The tiny creature interacted with Kennedy and Filoni, proving the technology continues to get smaller and better.
Although the identity of Weaver’s character is still unknown, photos and footage confirmed she is part of the New Republic. In fact, the footage shown centered on Djarin and Grogu attacking an AT-AT. In a scene reminiscent of Darth Vader’s rampage in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, the Mandalorian dispatches the entire Remnant Snowtrooper detail with panache and expediency. Of course, the Walker captain quickly seals the blast door to the control room, leading Mando to just blow up the entire transport. But in a quick cut to Weaver’s character sometime later, she calls the whole operation “messy” and denies Grogu a treat.
The footage also suggests the duo will obtain a new Razor Crest class ship while Grogu gets a chance to swim. He also still has his connection to the Force as a scene depicts him using it against a new type of mouse droid. The tease ended with a brief glimpse of Rotta the Hutt (Jeremy Allen White), Jabba’s son, in a stadium as Grogu looked on munching Mantell Mix from the seats. All in all, it looks like The Mandalorian amped up to the biggest screens possible. The film is due out on May 22, 2026.
(Photo by Christopher Jue/Getty Images)
The first season of Light & Magic from director Lawrence Kasdan centered on the formation of special effects company Industrial Light & Magic and the people who made it a fantastic place throughout the 20th Century. But it ended on something of a cliffhanger with the computer-generated tyrannosaurus rex from Jurassic Park signaling a major change in how visual effects would be made.
The second season of the documentary series, directed this time by ILM veteran Joe Johnston, picks up the story from that T-Rex by focusing on film likes Twister, Pirates of the Caribbean, and, of course, the Star Wars prequel trilogy. As Johnston put it via a video message screened during the celebration panel, “My goal for the second season was to chronicle the incredible chapter of change as the digital revolution took hold.”
Appearing on stage to discuss the way the Prequels pushed the art and technology forward were ILM President Lynwen Brennan, General Manager Janet Lewin, Lucasfilm Executive Design Director Doug Chiang, legendary VFX designer John Knoll, actor Ahmed Best, and digital effects artist Rob Coleman.
Moderated by voice actor Sam Witwer, the discussion centered mostly on the challenges in bringing Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace to life. At the time, an effects-heavy tentpole film consisted of maybe 300-400 effects shots. The Phantom Menace, meanwhile, has exactly one shot not augmented in some way by special or visual effects: a grate releasing poison gas early in the film. Chiang recalled submitting his portfolio to work on the film and discovering he got the job as the lead designer during his first meeting with director George Lucas. Assuming it was a job interview, he came without pencils or paper, and thus scribbled notes about what Lucas envisioned on napkins.
Footage of a baby-faced Knoll from the late 1990s revealed the daunting complexity of what Lucas hoped to accomplish with the first prequel. “Beyond the quantity, there were a lot of things that were beyond the capabilities of our tools. I was keeping a tally of all the things we needed to write to do cloth simulation or thousands of characters. In dozens of areas, we were going to develop new technologies,” he said.
“It was something I wanted,” he added. “As a teenager, I was inspired by the Star Wars films. I wanted to work on something of that scope and scale, but this was so much bigger.”
(Photo by Christopher Jue/Getty Images)
Best, meanwhile, had the honor and task of being the first actor to bring a fully CGI-animated lead character to life. Joking that he should be “more rich” for the contribution to cinema, he was quick to credit the team at ILM for making it happen. “It was an incredibly special time and it couldn’t have happened without everybody here. Jar Jar Binks isn’t just me, it’s all of us. There would be no Jar Jar without [them]. We are Jar Jar,” he said.
“There is no straight path to Star Wars. what we had was a passion and desire to make these things happen,” the actor continued. “What we all in had in common was that George had faith in us to figure it all out; that passion to deliver the best work that we could do for this thing we all love and this person who had faith in us. We had to bring our A-Game.”
That trust and passion worked out in a number of ways, from Best deciding how to deliver a seemingly indecipherable Jar Jar line to Coleman taking on the fight between Yoda and Count Dooku (Christopher Lee) in Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones, which was scripted as “a fight that defies description.” In both cases, Lucas told the artists that he knew they could work it out.
According to Chiang, season 2 of Light & Magic “really highlights the clarity of vision [from George].”
“I have that same feeling about how Joe Johnston told the story of nonlinear special effects,” Lewin added. “There’s a misconception that it is a linear process, but it is extremely iterative. These guys are the leaders, but everyone has a voice. I love that we have a program that celebrates that process.”
Brennan said, “Joe did such a great job on this series of capturing these moments. There’s this mystery [to VFX] and it can come over that it’s a button we just press when it’s really thousands of people figuring it all out together. It’s a wonderful thing to be a part of. And we all still get to do something that is impossible every day.”
Light & Magic season 2 is streaming now on Disney+.
(Photo by Christopher Jue/Getty Images)
During a panel celebrating 20 years of Lucasfilm Animation, vice president Athena Yvette Portillo and Filoni unveiled the next animated series, Star Wars: Maul – Shadow Lord, to a crowd of stunned fans who assembled to hear more about the duo’s creative process and stories of the division’s first two decades.
Set during the dark times of the Empire, a deposed and dejected Maul (voiced by Witwer) vows to get revenge on the criminals who benefited from his misfortune. He also sets out to take on a new apprentice — a young Twi’lek he seemingly met before. Both developments may lead to his position as leader of the Crimson Dawn syndicate as glimpsed in Solo: A Star Wars Story. The trailer screened during the panel revealed the next evolution of Lucasfilm’s animation style: a more painterly texture to the look iterated from Star Wars: The Clone Wars to Star Wars: The Bad Batch. It gave city planets and dingy prisons a new beauty. It also made Maul look quite imposing in the moments glimpsed during the preview. Following the video, Witwer took to the stage and said with Maul’s voice, “run it again.” The crowd sprang to their feet as the fan-favorite voice actor had a moment to bask in the enthusiasm.
The series is set to debut in 2026.
Star Wars Celebration continues through the weekend, so check back here for more!
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