The new Star Wars project was not going to be a series, but a high-budget movie

As you well know, the Disney subsidiary responsible for Star Wars, Lucasfilm, is about to release its second live-action Star Wars series of the year: Skeleton Crew.

Set after the events of Star Wars: Episode VI, Return of the Jedi, the series follows a group of children seeking adventures who end up stranded in space with a ship of unknown origin and are joined on their journey back home by a mysterious and potentially unreliable adult Force user (Jude Law).

The new series comes from the minds of Christopher Ford and Jon Watts, director of Spider-Man: No Way Home, and has the potential to become the Disney+ hit that Lucasfilm has been desperately needing for the past two years.

How Skeleton Crew went from being a movie to a series

As suitable as it may seem for the studio’s Disney+ model, Skeleton Crew was originally pitched to Lucasfilm as a movie years ago, Watts recently revealed.

“I proposed it right after the first Spider-Man Homecoming movie. Initially, it was proposed to Lucasfilm as a movie, and then I had to go make two Spider-Man movies because the first one did everything right,” the filmmaker told TVLine. “Over time, [Jon] Favreau made The Mandalorian and Disney+ emerged, so it evolved, while the Spider-Man movies were being made, into a series.”

#StarWars: #SkeletonCrew Creators Talk Original (Movie!) Pitch, How Lauded #Andor Took a Similarly Big Swing https://t.co/HP9zbj0g7s

— TVLine.com (@TVLine) November 30, 2024

According to Watts, the unexpected evolution of Skeleton Crew gave him and Ford the opportunity to delve deeper into the story and the world of the series more than they had initially thought (or imagined). “That gave us more time to explore the galaxy and get into this world of piracy and have a little more fun with it,” explained Watts.

Skeleton Crew is not the only Star Wars television series that will start as a movie. Obi-Wan Kenobi from 2022 was also originally conceived and developed as a feature film, but the poor performance of the Han Solo movie in 2018 forced Lucasfilm to reconsider their plans at that time.

Despite the change, Obi-Wan Kenobi continued to be well-received when it aired on Disney+. Now, fans can only hope that Skeleton Crew achieves the same feat on Monday, December 2, the day of its premiere.