The future of the Star Wars franchise, which has spawned more than 20 films in its 50-plus years of life, was dealt a blow this weekend when Disney said it will stop releasing new Star Wars films.
While the studio said in a statement that it’s committed to a future trilogy, it won’t be a standalone film.
“It was decided to stop releasing the Star Trek films, including Star Trek Into Darkness, because we felt that they were not fully satisfying,” Disney president of production Kathleen Kennedy said in the statement.
“While we remain committed to the Star War story, we have decided to make a series of films that will explore all the aspects of the franchise, from the characters to the settings and stories to the universe.”
The announcement comes as the Star Citizen game continues to gain steam.
It’s one of the biggest new IPs for virtual reality, and its popularity has been fueled by the game’s ability to make players feel like they are actually there.
As of today, Star Citizen has been downloaded more than 1 million times.
“I’ve been on the ground since March of last year, and I’ve been a fan of the game for quite a long time,” Chris Roberts, founder and CEO of Cloud Imperium Games, told GamesBeat in a recent interview.
“When we first started, we didn’t think about the long term.
But as the years went on and we got more experienced, we realised that if you put a lot of effort into the engine and put a fair amount of work into the story and the characters and the settings, you could build something that’s going to last for a long period of time.” “
We thought, okay, we’ll just build a bunch of ships and put them together and we’ll go get the starships.
But as the years went on and we got more experienced, we realised that if you put a lot of effort into the engine and put a fair amount of work into the story and the characters and the settings, you could build something that’s going to last for a long period of time.”
“We were like, we want to do this on the scale that we have for Star Citizen.”
Roberts said Star Citizen is set to launch in 2022 and the game has already raised more than $1.2 billion.
“There’s a lot more money out there, a lot bigger, a million people have invested,” he said.
As for Star Wars: Episode VII, which is set for a 2019 release, Roberts said the franchise has “never been more relevant.” “
So, it’s not that Star Citizen doesn’t have the potential to be a huge hit, it has the potential for huge success.”
As for Star Wars: Episode VII, which is set for a 2019 release, Roberts said the franchise has “never been more relevant.”
“The idea of Star Wars was so relevant in the early years of the world, and the concept of having the first generation of humans in space on the back of a single vehicle, a single planet, the idea of the first trilogy was so significant,” he told Entertainment Weekly in 2016.
“
And I think that’s what we’re really starting to get.”