Who Will Ryan Gosling Play in Shawn Levy's <em>Star Wars: Starfighter</em> Movie?

Ryan Gosling’s Star Wars film is kicking into hyperspeed. At a Star Wars Celebration event in Tokyo, Japan, Shawn Levy and Gosling appeared on stage to officially announce that their upcoming new Star Wars film titled Star Wars: Starfighter.

“There are many rumors, some true, some not," the Deadpool & Wolverine director teased about the film. "This is not a prequel, this is not a sequel. It’s a new adventure."

Levy's words echo previous reports that Star Wars: Starfighter takes place five years after the event of The Rise of Skywalker (2019). The story supposedly takes place outside of the Skywalker canon. Gosling called the film, "such a great story with great and original characters," at the Tokyo expo. "There is not a more perfect filmmaker for this particular story than Shawn."

The standalone Star Wars entry is set for release on May 28, 2027. Though it may seem far away, a release date is a huge deal for Star Wars fans. Potential Star Wars films by David Benioff & D.B. Weiss, Taika Waititi and Patty Jenkins all fell out of production over the last few years. Hopefully, Gosling and Levy change all that. The film enters production this fall.

Currently, it's unclear whether or not the new film has any connection to the 2001 video game of the same name. Star Wars: Starfighter was released as a spacecraft shooter for the PlayStation 2. The story follows Rhys Dallows, a member of the Naboo Royal Space Fighter Corps, who is sent on a mission right before the events of the Battle of Naboo in Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace (1999).

Gosling and Levy both describe the film as a standalone entry that reportedly takes place as the most recent entry on the timeline for Star Wars projects. Still, it's possible that same aspects of the game's plot could be adapted for the film.

While Gosling's character currently remains under wraps, this is not the first time that the Barbie's actor name has entered the conversation for a Star Wars role. Though the series usually casts relative unknowns to build them up as stars, Gosling’s name was first linked to lead the ninth Star Wars film in 2012. Rumors at the time pitched the actor as a young Han Solo, while other outlets claimed that he would star as Luke Skywalker’s son. A bizarre GQ post in 2013 even featured a crudely-photoshopped Gosling wielding a lightsaber and wearing Anakin Skywalker’s rattail. (It was weird time on the Internet.)

Still, Gosling's Star Wars role never surfaced. The actor stated that he wanted to take a break from acting in early 2013, around the same time that J.J. Abrams announced he would direct the next Star Wars film. Then, a representative for the actor told HuffPost that the rumors of his potential Episode VII outing were “not true.” He later went on to play a different next-generation Harrison Ford character in Blade Runner 2049.

Another Ford-esque role now seems likely for Gosling. According to Levy, lovable rogues are not out of the question for his stand-alone film. He’s just not interested in another Skywalker story. “There’s only so many times that Star Wars movies can revisit the same section of the timeline,” Levy told Josh Horowitz on the “Happy Sad Confused” podcast in August. “I don’t want to do a Star Wars movie that is redundant to others, nor am I interested in doing one that has to serve another movie.”

“I really wanted to craft something that felt organic to me in tone and characters,” Levy continued. “There’s certainly the Force, and a connection to something bigger than our individual selves, and the way that that can make us powerful. Those themes, combined with visual delight and wish fulfillment—that’s Star Wars to me."