The Lucasfilm executive described fans of the original trilogy, prequels, sequels, Clone Wars, and Legends as separate groups with different interests, and framed his job as appealing to all of them at once.
Dave Filoni has named the problem Star Wars has been circling for a decade.
The Lucasfilm executive said the challenge for the franchise’s future is bringing together fans of different generations, describing them as groups with genuinely different interests.
“The original, prequel, sequel, Clone Wars, Legends,” he said. “Each has different interests. We’re always thinking about how to appeal to all of them and unite them through their shared love for Star Wars.”
Why Star Wars fandom splits by generation
The divisions Filoni names are real and they track roughly to when someone came to the franchise.
Viewers who saw the original trilogy first tend to hold a different set of expectations than those who grew up with the prequels, whose reputation reversed almost entirely once the audience that watched them as children became adults.
The Clone Wars, which Filoni ran, created its own fanbase around characters like Ahsoka Tano who never appeared in a film. Legends covers the expanded universe material declared non-canon after Disney’s acquisition, which remains a live grievance for the readers who spent decades with it.
The sequel trilogy divides audiences on its own terms.
What Filoni’s position means for future Star Wars
The practical question is whether appealing to all of those groups at once is achievable.
Filoni’s own record suggests a method rather than a compromise. The Clone Wars and Ahsoka both built new material while treating earlier material as fixed, which is how Ahsoka could bring back Hayden Christensen as Anakin and Ray Stevenson‘s Baylan Skoll in the same series.
Ahsoka Season 2 arrives on Disney+ on January 20, with Christensen returning.
The Star Wars slate right now
The franchise has a busy stretch and a thin one at the same time.
Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu reaches Disney+ on September 2, alongside an animated LEGO Star Wars special. The film took roughly $345 million worldwide theatrically, which Disney CEO Josh D’Amaro acknowledged fell short of box office expectations.
On the film side, Lucasfilm passed on a droid movie pitched by Paddington director Paul King and writer Simon Farnaby, who were told the studio needed it to feel more like a Star Wars movie. They are reworking it as an original science fiction film instead.
Ewan McGregor has spent the summer publicly asking Disney to let him play Obi-Wan Kenobi again, saying Lucasfilm seems not to be ready.
Uniting the generations is a reasonable goal. Getting films made at all has been the harder problem lately.
Article compiled with the help of the Pirates & Princesses newsroom.
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Hat Tips:
Dave Filoni remarks (August 2026), the quote on uniting generations of Star Wars fans
StarWars.com, the September 2 Mandalorian and Grogu streaming date and the LEGO Star Wars special
Variety (August 2026), Simon Farnaby’s account of the rejected droid pitch
E! News (August 10, 2026), Ewan McGregor’s comments on Obi-Wan Kenobi
TV Source Magazine (August 2026), the Ahsoka Season 2 January 20 premiere