Star Wars Celebration: Every big announcement from the weekend

Mega fan convention Star Wars Celebration took place in London over the long Easter weekend and brought with it a raft of force-altering announcements.

With the current season of The Mandalorian currently airing weekly on Disney+ and already a whole bunch of extra TV shows planned for the streaming service, the Star Wars universe is still set to expand dramatically in the years to come.

Fan favourite characters will be revisited and new icons will be forged as Lucasfilm/Disney unveiled a slate of upcoming projects and teased a few more.

Read more: Andor cast on Season 2: 'It's weirder than you think'

Read on for every major announcement from Star Wars Celebration.

A Rey movie starring Daisy Ridley

Perhaps the biggest announcement of the weekend was that Daisy Ridley would be returning to the series as Rey in a film set 15 years after the end of The Rise of Skywalker.

The as-yet-untitled film will see Rey attempt to rebuild the Jedi Order and be directed by Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy.

Ridley also appeared on stage to say: "My heart is pounding. I'm very thrilled to be continuing this journey."

Kathleen Kennedy also teased that other characters from the sequel trilogy could return for the film.

Read more: Rey script still 'six weeks off'

“We’ve been working on that [film] for a few years and all of that feeds in to our overall storytelling,” Kennedy told Yahoo.

“So we’ve just got to a point now where we’ve got a wonderful writer in Steven Knight, he’s come on board and we’re going to see a script probably in the next month and a half that we’ve been working on for quite a while.

"So we’re getting close.”

James Mangold's untitled Star Wars film

He's taken Indiana Jones on his latest adventure and now he's off to a galaxy far, far away. James Mangold has been confirmed to be directing a story set 25,000 years before the events of Star Wars.

The movie will explore the origins of the force and has been described as a "biblical epic" with the director likening it to The Ten Commandments.

Dave Filoni's untitled film set after Return of the Jedi

Star Wars mainstay Dave Filoni will also be directing a film set after Return of the Jedi that will be a part of the interconnecting world currently seen on TV through The Mandalorian, The Book of Boba Fett and the upcoming Ahsoka.

Lucasfilm confirmed that the film will close out that story so we could be getting Grogu on the big screen but there was no formal announcement made about which characters will be appearing in the movie.

Read more: Will Grogu appear in Dave Filoni's movie?

"With The Mandalorian we got little glimpses of what’s happening politically in the New Republic," Jon Favreau told Yahoo, "but when you’re dealing with characters like Ahsoka and Sabine and Hera and Mon Mothma, you’re dealing with a much higher level of politics in the Star Wars world.

"And so as those stories get to be explored more, there’s opportunities for bigger culminations that are happening on the big screen where you can present things that are more challenging on the small screen.”

Andor season 2 release date

The surprise hit of 2022, Andor will return for a second and final season in 2024 with the show leading directly into Rogue One.

Filming for the show started in November and series creator Tony Gilroy announced that Cassian Andor should be returning to Disney+ around August next year.

“I think it will be really intriguing to watch how audiences [take] this ‘I’ll just cover four years and do these year-long gaps’ [approach],” Gilroy told Yahoo.

Read more: Expect the unexpected from Andor S2

“Because there’s year-long gaps between the episodes and it’s been very exciting to work on. It was an experiment at the beginning and it’s an experiment that we think is working out pretty well.

"So, from a writing point of view it’s really exciting. And the actors like it as well.”

Ahsoka unveiled

Ahsoka is coming soon — this August to be exact — and Star Wars Celebration launched its first look at the show and its lead Rosario Dawson (who had earlier appeared in The Mandalorian and Boba Fett).

Dawson confirmed that the show will follow on from the animated Star Wars Rebels and the show will also star Natasha Liu Bordizzo, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Ray Stevenson, David Tennant and Lars Mikkelsen. Hayden Christensen is also returning as Darth Vader.

Read more: Ahsoka cast tease a dangerous new villain

Talking about Thrawn, the show's big bad — and a deep cut from the Star Wars Extended Universe — Kathleen Kennedy told Yahoo: "I think that [Thrawn] might not be an obvious villain – by having this calm demeanour; by not having necessarily the attributes we’re used to [in] Vader and Palpatine. He’s unpredictable.”

Star Wars: Skeleton Crew

Lucasfilm also shared a trailer for The Skeleton Crew for the audience in attendance but have not yet made it available online. What is known is that the show will have a largely child cast and the clip shown at Star Wars Celebration featured kids on speeders, in Star Wars school and apparently gave a glimpse of a villain from The Mandalorian.

The Skeleton Crew will also star Jude Law, Kerry Condon and Tunde Adepimbe.

The Acolyte

Pitched as Frozen meets Kill Bill, The Acolyte is set 100 years before the prequel trilogy, still not much is known about the show which is expected to premiere next year.

A first look of the show was unveiled over the weekend and the series features an impressive ensemble cast that includes Amandla Stenberg, Lee Jung-jae, Carrie-Anne Moss, Jodie Turner-Smith and Dean Charles-Chapman.

Read more: Acolyte cast share details of new Jedi

The footage, which was not shared online, featured shots of a gold lightsaber, action sequences and and a group of Jedi.

Showrunner and creator Leslye Headland told Yahoo: “I think that people have this conception of the Jedi as very stoic, and without emotion.

"And I think what JJ (Lee Jung-jae) brings to this particular role is an emotional complexity that you don't get to often see with Jedi. You do see [it] with some characters, but I think what he's done is astonishing. And I can't wait for the world to see it.”

Return of the Jedi re-release

Return of the Jedi turns 40 this year and Lucasfilm have decided to mark the occasion by re-releasing the classic movie in cinemas later this spring.

Return of the Jedi will hit cinemas for one weekend on 28 April-1 May and a new poster designed by Matt Ferguson has also been made for the event.

Star Wars: Visions season 2

The anthology series will be returning on 4 May — aka Star Wars Day — with an ensemble of different animated studios each producing one of the nine episodes.

The most notable studio is of course Aardman, best known for creating Wallace and Gromit. Their episode will be set after the original trilogy and feature supporting character Wedge Antilles with Denis Lawson returning to voice the character.

The Bad Batch to end with S3

Disney+'s animated clone trooper season was confirmed to be returning for a third and final season which will air in 2024. A teaser trailer was shown to fans featuring Ian McDiarmid's Palpatine.

Star Wars: Tales of the Jedi S2 announced

A second season of the animated anthology show, set during the prequel trilogy era, was also announced by Dave Filoni at Celebration.

Young Jedi Adventures trailer released

The pre-school Disney Junior series was confirmed to be released on 4 May, and a trailer for the show was released online to support the announcement.

Watch below: Star Wars Celebration: Lars Mikkelsen returns as Grand Admiral Thrawn