Lucasarts wants to make sure at least one of the movies in the coming deluge of Star Wars stories comes from a female director. According to Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens producer Kathleen Kennedy, Lucasarts is committed to putting a woman at the helm of a movie in the Star Wars universe.
“There’s nothing we’d like more than to find a female director for Star Wars,” Kennedy said. “There is an assumption made that the people involved should predominantly be men. There are women who are Star Wars fans. That’s what’s so insane.”
All five Star Wars movies currently in development —Episodes VII, VIII and IX, plus space heist Rogue One and an as-yet-untitled Han Solo spin-off— will be directed by men. Variety reporter Marc Gasser noted earlier this year that Disney plans to make “at least three” Star Wars spin-offs in the next decade, which means there is still one more chance for the studio to put a woman in the director’s chair.
In August, Star Wars Episode IX director Colin Trevorrow told the LA Times most summer blockbusters have been directed by men because women are “choosing not to make them.” Trevorrow has since reconsidered that statement, but Kennedy pushed against the sentiment more aggressively, arguing , “Part of our job is to nurture talent. We need to not go to a filmmaker who’s done one movie and expect them to come in and do something the size of Star Wars without having an opportunity to find other movies they can do along the way.”
The first of the new films, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens, comes to theaters December 18.