Rumor: Spider-Man: No Way Home Director Jon Watts Might Direct Mystery Star Wars Series

We've been hearing for weeks now about a potential new live-action Star Wars series which isn't part of the current official roster of shows announced back in late 2020. Rumors have started to pile up recently, and now we might have a clearer idea of where this might be headed. Note that we're choosing to run this as a rumor for now, as the big trades haven't followed up on the reports yet.



The folks at DiscussingFilm have heard from their sources that Marvel Studios veteran Jon Watts, the director behind the last three live-action Spider-Man films, might be involved in some capacity with the show, potentially helming 'at least one episode' of the yet-to-be-announced TV series. Furthermore, they also claim that Jon Favreau is also executive producing the series -- this raises some questions that we'll briefly discuss below.



So far, every bit of info regarding this series points at Lucasfilm treating the project as 'Stranger Things in space' set in the High Republic era, with a cast mostly consisting of actors in their pre-teens. If that is true, then it makes sense to enlist a filmmaker such as Watts, who has plenty of experience working on stories that follow pre-teens and teenagers -- this goes beyond his work on the latest Spider-Man trilogy; 2015's Cop Car landed him the Marvel gig for a reason. Some may think that Watts is too busy right now prepping for the upcoming Fantastic Four film by Marvel Studios to think about a trip to a galaxy far, far away, but he's way less busy currently than Taika Waititi was when he surprised everyone by shooting the first season finale of The Mandalorian.



In our opinion, the biggest curveball in DiscussingFilm's report is the part about Jon Favreau's role in this production. It seems like Favreau and Dave Filoni have stuck to their 'Mando-related' projects so far, but maybe Lucasfilm is now tasking him with (partially) overseeing more of their TV productions after the undisputable success of both The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett, at least when it comes to hitting deadlines and consistently delivering enticing Star Wars content for Disney Plus.



Another possibility is that Favreau could be part of the team behind the series because it's not actually set in the High Republic era, and instead has a connection to whatever he's cooking alongside Filoni in the post-Return era. After Chapter 6 of The Book of Boba Fett, it's not hard to imagine Lucasfilm taking on a live-action project centered around Luke's Jedi academy. But this is just pure speculation.



One way or another, it appears that Disney and Lucasfilm are about to expand their slate of Star Wars projects in unexpected ways, and with the next Celebration right around the corner, we fully expect things to start heating up soon.



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