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Kathleen Kennedy has addressed Ryan Gosling’s casting in Shawn Levy’s upcoming Star Wars movie, as well as just how long the film has surprisingly been in development. Star Wars Celebration 2025 has begun in Japan, and ScreenRant is in attendance to get all the exciting details and news coming from the galaxy far, far away. This includes exclusive interviews with none other than Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy.

Following Star Wars Celebration’s first panel covering The Mandalorian & Grogu and Star Wars: Starfighter, ScreenRant got the chance to sit with Kathlenn Kennedy, who revealed some key insights about Ryan Gosling’s new Star Wars casting and just how long Starfighter has been in development:

“Shawn started talking about Ryan right from the beginning. When he was developing this, he had Ryan in mind.

I’ve known Sean a long time and I think that he is one of the perfect directors for Star Wars. He has that wonderful sense of humor, fun, loves Star Wars. He’s been dying to do this forever.

In fact, I talked to him as he mentioned in 2022, but I talked to him even before that because he had gotten into Stranger Things and suddenly with that success, it kind of took him off the market for a while. So he’s been thinking about this story for quite some time and wanting to do something in the Star Wars universe, I think his whole life.”