‘Star Wars: Starfighter’ Footage: Ryan Gosling Races Through the Galaxy With Young Sidekick
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- Disney and Lucasfilm debuted the first "Star Wars: Starfighter" footage at D23, with director Shawn Levy announcing a May 28, 2027 release — the same weekend the original 1977 "Star Wars" premiered exactly 50 years earlier.
- "Star Wars: Starfighter" is the first standalone Star Wars theatrical film since 2019's "The Rise of Skywalker," set five years after the sequel trilogy, with Levy directing from a script by Jonathan Tropper.
- Ryan Gosling plays pilot Kade Auberon, who finds a young man (Flynn Gray) playing with a decommissioned star fighter jet described as the fastest ever built, then flies it through alien landscapes including skyscraper-sized ocean geysers.
- The cast includes Matt Smith, Mia Goth, Aaron Pierre, Simon Bird, Jamael Westman, Daniel Ings, and Amy Adams alongside Gray, with filming in Sardinia, Italy offering a visually distinct departure from familiar Star Wars locales like Tatooine and Hoth.
- The film arrives after years of Star Wars thriving on Disney+ with "The Mandalorian," "The Book of Boba Fett," "Obi-Wan Kenobi," "Ahsoka," "Andor," "The Acolyte," and "Skeleton Crew," with "The Mandalorian and Grogu" having recently hit theaters May 22.
Why it matters: This marks Star Wars' return to the big screen as a standalone theatrical film after years of Disney+ streaming series, with a release date deliberately engineered to land on the exact 50th anniversary of the original 1977 film's opening weekend. Pairing Ryan Gosling with director Shawn Levy — both proven theatrical draws — signals Disney's bet that a big-budget standalone adventure, not another trilogy, is what re-energizes the franchise on the big screen.
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