Posted in: Lucasfilm, Movies | Tagged: star wars: starfighter

Star Wars: Starfighter Director "Forced To Come Up" With A New 3rd Act

Star Wars: Starfighter director Shawn Levy revealed that he was "forced to come up with a new idea" for the third act of the film.

If there is something to be concerned about, it's when movies go into production with scripts that are either incomplete or end up falling apart. While there have been plenty of times when it has worked out okay, there have also been plenty more where it's obvious someone involved was flying by the seat of their pants. Marvel movies go into shooting with incomplete scripts, which is absolutely insane when you think about the amount of money that is being pumped into those things. Star Wars: Starfighter did not go into shooting with an incomplete script, but director Shawn Levy recently revealed on the podcast On Film… With Kevin McCarthy (via GamesRadar+), the third act of this film fell apart, but he believes it's for the better.

"On Starfighter it was – we had a whole different idea for something in the third act and then things didn't align and I was forced to come up with a new idea. And I'm literally right now shooting that section of the movie. And everyday I'm grateful that the way I was supposed to do it didn't work out, because the new idea that it forced me to explore is so much better than the original idea would have been."

Levy went on to talk about the amount of pressure he puts on himself on every set, but that the self-imposed pressure for Star Wars: Starfighter was on another level. "The first few weeks of shooting, it felt like this oppressive sort of cloud over me, because every day they would come to me," he continued. "It's a hundred questions a day. And especially Starfighter, it's not a sequel, it's not a prequel, it's not legacy characters. And it's not in a period of time in the galaxy that's ever been explored…What this means is that we are inventing everything in the movie. And the desire to make design choices, character choices, planet choices, costume choices, droid choices, alien choices, all of it needs to feel Star Wars-y." Yeah, no pressure at all, Star Wars fans are notoriously easy to please and never have any nitpicky complaints.

Star Wars: Starfighter Went From 0-100 At Lightspeed

The Mandalorian & Grogu will be the official return to a galaxy far, far away on the big screen, but reports about a film from Shawn Levy began in November 2022. Everyone thought that the film seemed like one that wouldn't get much traction for a while since Levy had other projects to work on, but then Ryan Gosling got involved. His [potential at the time] involvement following the massive success of the Barbie meant that Levy's project went from "eventually" to "right now."

That involvement was first teased back in January 2025, but no one confirmed anything, and it seemed they were waiting until Celebration in April 2025, which isn't a surprise. On the stage in front of a bunch of hopefully not-too-jetlagged fans, it was announced that Levy's project would be titled Star Wars: Starfighter. They also confirmed that Gosling had been cast and that the film had been given a prime-time release date of May 28, 2027.

In a press release sent out by Disney, we also got some very vague story details. The release described the film as "a standalone adventure taking place approximately five years after the events of 2019's Star Wars: Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker. …  [Star Wars: Starfighter] is an entirely new adventure featuring all-new characters set in a period of time that has not been explored on screen yet." The release also confirmed that production will begin in fall 2025, which makes sense for a May 2027 release date and how much post-production a massive film like this needs. It was reported that Mia Goth had joined the cast in early June. In early August, it was reported that Matt Smith had joined the cast.

Star Wars: Starfighter stars Ryan Gosling, Flynn Gray, Matt Smith, Mia Goth, Aaron Pierre, Simon Bird, Jamael Westman, Daniel Ings, and Amy Adams. It is directed by Shawn Levy and produced by Levy and Kathleen Kennedy. The executive producers are Ryan Gosling, Dan Levine, Mary McLaglen, and Josh McLaglen. The script is by Jonathan Tropper.

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