With Michael Arndt already on board to pen Star Wars: Episode VII for a release in 2015, Disney and LucasFilm may already be looking towards the future of the franchise. Deadline's little birdies have learned that franchise scribes Lawrence Kasdan and Simon Kinberg have been approached to possibly begin work on Episodes 8 and 9.
Kasdan is a very familiar face around the LucasFilm halls, as he wrote both The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, along with Raiders of the Lost Ark. So he would presumably fit pretty neatly back into the universe he had an important hand in crafting. Kinsberg is stranger to major tentpole flicks, either, having written both X-men: The Last Stand and X-men: First Class, along with the upcoming sequel X-men: Days of Future Past.
If they're already getting the ball rolling on sequels that means we can probably expect to hear a director announced shortly(I predicted Thanksgiving day), with casting news soon to follow. If Kasdan's again tackling the trilogy's middle chapter does that mean it'll be a bit darker in tone the way 'Empire' was? I sure hope so.
