Lucasfilm is assembling a new theatrical chapter of Star Wars, attaching a major studio filmmaker to the first movie in a planned three-part cycle. The hire would send Jon Watts into feature directing for the franchise after he already worked inside that universe on television.
Jon Watts, the director of the Spider-Man Home trilogy, is now attached to the opening film of Simon Kinberg’s planned Star Wars cycle. Those movies are being developed as the next chapters of the Skywalker Saga after The Rise of Skywalker closed that nine-film arc in 2019. Disney has not formally greenlit the project, and Lucasfilm declined to comment.
Watts is already familiar with Disney’s largest live-action brands and with this particular galaxy. He steered Tom Holland through the first three standalone Spider-Man pictures and later helped create Star Wars: Skeleton Crew, directing multiple episodes of the series that still streams on Disney+.
Kinberg’s relationship with Lucasfilm predates the current scripts by more than a decade. He co-created the animated series Star Wars Rebels with Dave Filoni and Carrie Beck, and his 2024 trilogy agreement landed in the same period the studio was preparing Skeleton Crew for streaming. He has been developing the closely guarded three-film story since late 2024, even as the earliest accounts clashed over whether the movies would pick up the numbering of Episodes I through IX.
The first of those films is being discussed internally as Episode X. The project is meant to continue stories tied to the Skywalker bloodline across generations, rather than stand entirely apart from the nine numbered chapters that came before. Daisy Ridley’s Rey Skywalker is expected to appear in some form across the new trio.
That placement would reopen a saga many viewers treated as closed after 2019. J.J. Abrams’ The Rise of Skywalker completed the sequel trilogy that began with The Force Awakens and continued through The Last Jedi. A return to episode numbering would therefore carry unusual weight for a studio that spent years emphasizing standalone adventures.
The movie remains a development project rather than a locked production. It is described as the Lucasfilm feature furthest along after Starfighter, yet still short of a Disney green light. No release year has been set for Watts’ film.
Watts arrives with a résumé built for large studio machinery. He first drew notice with the lean thriller Cop Car before Disney and Sony trusted him with Spider-Man: Homecoming, Spider-Man: Far From Home, and Spider-Man: No Way Home. After that run he directed the star vehicle Wolfs and signed a first-look feature deal with Walt Disney Studios through his company Freshman Year.
His television work is what most directly prepared him for a Star Wars set. With Christopher Ford he co-created Star Wars: Skeleton Crew, a New Republic-era coming-of-age series led by Jude Law. Watts directed episodes of that show, which also featured work from David Lowery, Lee Isaac Chung, Jake Schreier, Bryce Dallas Howard, and Daniels.
Lucasfilm has not confirmed the directing deal in a public statement. That silence matches the company’s earlier refusal to discuss the Kinberg trilogy when that writing deal surfaced in 2024. The attachment still places Watts among the small group of filmmakers trusted with a numbered Star Wars chapter.
The 2024 announcement itself was messy on one central point. Some early dispatches treated the Kinberg films as Episodes X through XII, a direct extension of George Lucas’s numbered saga. Other studio-connected accounts insisted the movies would launch a separate story with new leads, a contradiction that later coverage has only partly resolved.
Current reporting now leans toward saga continuity. The Watts film is being framed as the next chapter in the Skywalker line, with the follow-up carrying the Episode X label. Ridley’s involvement, even if limited at first, is one reason the project is being grouped with the earlier numbered films.
Kinberg is expected to produce as well as write. He first joined Lucasfilm as a consultant around The Force Awakens and later spent four seasons helping run Star Wars Rebels. That animated series introduced several characters and ideas that later migrated into live action, giving him a longer institutional memory than most outside writers who enter the franchise.
The scale of the assignment is still unusual for a filmmaker best known outside Star Wars for mutant-superhero dramas. Kinberg wrote, produced, and directed multiple X-Men titles and worked on related films including Logan and the Deadpool series. That comic-book track record is what made his original Lucasfilm pact stand out.
Variety earlier established that Simon Kinberg will write the screenplay for the film Watts is slated to direct. He remains most closely identified as a writer, producer, and director within the X-Men franchise, and that pedigree registered as an unexpected match when Lucasfilm first attached him to a new Star Wars trilogy.
Knight Edge Media first reported that Lucasfilm was circling Watts for Episode X.
