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Aimee Hart is an Entertainment and Gaming staff writer here at Polygon. After watching the original trilogy at five, she decided to make Star Wars her entire personality and hasn't let go of the franchise since. Aimee also has a great love for Dungeons & Dragons and everything Critical Role. She has been a games, entertainment, tech, and culture reporter and critic for 10 years, with bylines at Inverse, Fanbyte, Rolling Stone, and many more.
And Lucasfilm and Disney aren't done yet
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Though Disney's and Lucasfilm's Star Wars: Starfighter isn't out until May 27, it's already making waves. As Forbes reports, the upcoming sci-fi film is proving costly, having racked up $226.5 million by the time filming wrapped.
Unless you're talking about Ahsoka season 2, Star Wars productions usually cost a pretty penny — even TV shows. Starfighter, however, seems to have gone all out: its budget is higher than what was spent during the same period on the 2015 film Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which was later revealed in 2023 to be the most expensive movie ever made (but Colin Trevorrow's 2022 Jurassic World Dominion has since knocked it off its perch).
Could Starfighter become the most expensive film ever?
However, depending on how much work goes into Starfighter during post-production, the next Star Wars film could beat even Dominion. After all, post-production is notably when visual effects (VFX) ramp up. As a Star Wars entry, Starfighter will likely feature extensive VFX for aliens, potential starfighter battles, and planetscapes.
Given how visually unstimulating Disney’s latest big-screen offering, The Mandalorian and Grogu, was, we can assume that visual effects studio Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) will pull out all the stops to make Starfighter look amazing. To put it bluntly: that means Starfighter's post-production could be extremely costly.
The Mandalorian and Grogu was a box office failure. It had the worst opening weekend of any Star Wars film and earned just $345.6 million — the lowest total of any Disney Star Wars film. Lucasfilm and Disney have a lot to prove to their audiences, so the more they invest in perfecting Starfighter’s quality, the better.
That said, there is a caveat regarding the production costs of both Starfighter and The Force Awakens. Both movies were filmed at Pinewood Studios in the UK, so production benefited from the UK government’s Audio-Visual Expenditure Credit. This is managed by HMRC and certified by BFI. In simple terms, this gives productions a cash reimbursement of up to 25.5% of the money they spend in the country. Knowing a production can recoup up to 25.5% of eligible UK spending gives producers greater budgetary flexibility. Whether that will pay off for Starfighter’s quality remains to be seen.
Shawn Levy, known for Deadpool & Wolverine, directs Starfighter, set five years after The Rise of Skywalker. It follows Kade Auberon (Ryan Gosling), a cynical character with a checkered but mysterious past. Gosling is joined by Flynn Gray, Matt Smith, Mia Goth, and Amy Adams.