Ryan Gosling can rest assured that he will enter the Star Wars universe with Luke Skywalker’s blessing.
“He’s great in everything,” Mark Hamill told E! News of Gosling’s Starfighter at the opening of the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art. “Perfect personality for it. I know he’ll be great. I especially loved his Bevis to Mikey Day’s Butt-Head on SNL. That was the best live-action Bevis and Butt-Head I’ve ever seen.”
He has similarly high praise for everyone currently steering the Star Wars universe.
“They’re doing so well, they don’t need any advice for me,” he added at the Sept. 19 event in Los Angeles . “As you say, The Mandalorian. I thought Rogue One was great. Andor is great. Dave Filoni and Jon Favreau are just doing a great job, so they don’t need any advice for me. I’m no longer a participant, but I’ll always be a fan.”
Written by Your Friends & Neighbors creator Jonathan Tropper, Star Wars: Starfighter was directed by Shawn Levy (Free Guy, Deadpool & Wolverine), who is now in the thick of post-production ahead of the movie’s spring 2027 release date.
Plot details are thin, though we do know the story revolves around Kade Auberon (Gosling), a cynical, Han Solo-esque outsider from the wrong side of the galaxy whose destiny is linked to the fastest starfighter in existence. The movie takes place five years after Rise of Skywalker, but does not contain any major connections to the wider saga.
“While I was making Deadpool & Wolverine, Lucasfilm and Disney said, ‘We want you to do Star Wars, and take it somewhere unexpected,'” Levy recalled to Good Morning America at D23 in August. “And I said, ‘Okay, what is it a sequel to? What’s it a prequel to?’ And they were like, ‘Just make it loyal to this franchise you love.’ [So] new characters, new timeframe, new Starfighters, new freighters, new aliens, new droids…They said, ‘Take it where you think it should go,’ and then they backed it up by giving me that freedom.”
Gosling’s co-stars include Amy Adams (Enchanted), Matt Smith (House of the Dragon), Mia Goth (The Odyssey), Aaron Pierre (Lanterns), Simon Bird (The Inbetweeners), Daniel Ings (A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms) and newcomer Flynn Gray.
When Does Star Wars: Starfighter Come Out?
Star Wars: Starfighter arrives on the big screen May 28, 2027.
Tickets are not yet on sale.
Levy and outgoing Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy are producers on Starfighter. Gosling, meanwhile, is an executive producer alongside Dan Levine, Mary McLaglen and Josh McLaglen.
Disney seems so confident in the project, that it has allowed Levy, Gosling and Tropper to reunite on a Ghost Rider reboot for Marvel Studios. The comic book-inspired blockbuster is scheduled to hit theaters in July 2028.
(SYFY and E! News are both part of the Versant Media family.)
