Kathleen Kennedy Says Star Wars Will No Longer Recast Classic Characters

Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy says that Disney will no longer cast younger actors to play existing characters in Star Wars stories set in an earlier time period. She cited the lukewarm reception of the 2018 movie Solo: A Star Wars Story and the success of the TV series The Mandalorian as factors in the decision. Solo was an origin story of sorts for the character Han Solo, with Alden Ehrenreich playing the title character and Donald Glover playing Lando Calrission as younger men.

Kennedy says that the future of the Star Wars franchise means expanding the known universe to focus on new characters. She's right about that. We had nine films that relied way too much on genetic relationships and too much on one forsaken planet at the outer rim of the galaxy (Tatooine). They also relied too much on nostalgia, with the prequels shoehorning in characters like C3PO and Chewbacca who had no business being there, and the sequels were so reliant on legacy characters that Carrie Fisher's death forced a rewrite of The Rise of Skywalker

However, Kennedy only said that younger actors will not be cast for these roles. That doesn't mean that legacy characters will not show up occasionally. Luke Skywalker was in The Mandalorian. Carrie Fisher was digitally recreated for a flashback scene in The Rise of Skywalker. Could Kennedy's announcement mean that Disney will still use legacy characters, but only with cheaper digital recreations?

The upcoming miniseries Obi-Wan Kenobi uses a grandfathered actor in Ewan McGregor, who portrayed Obi-Wan way more than Alec Guinness ever did. But how will this affect the long planned TV series about Lando Calrissian? Not much has been said about the show, although Donald Glover seems to be on board with playing the character again. Like McGregor, this might not count, as Glover has already played the character. Only time will tell. -via reddit 

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