Matt Smith lands villain role in Star Wars: Starfighter

Matt Smith will play the villain in Star Wars: Starfighter.

The House of the Dragon star has signed up to appear alongside Ryan Gosling and Mia Goth in the upcoming film after director Shawn Levy met with a number of actors about the key role in the movie, and executives opted for the former Doctor Who lead, Deadline reports.

Exact details on Matt's role in the film are being kept vague, but sources told the outlet it will be one of the villains.

Star Wars: Starfighter - which will begin shooting later this year ahead of a May 2027 release - will act as a standalone movie within the space opera franchise and will be set five years after 2019's The Rise of Skywalker,

Shawn, 56, recently teased the film will be a whole "new adventure" for fans.

He said: “There are many rumours, some true, some not. … This is not a prequel, this is not a sequel. It’s a new adventure.”

Gosling, 44, gushed: “There is not a more perfect filmmaker for this particular story than Shawn."

The script comes from Jonathan Tropper, who has spent the past two years working on it.

Levy has been working on the movie with Lucasfilm since 2022 and last year, he said he was not planning to connect his work to any other films or TV shows in the long-running series.

Speaking on the ‘Happy Sad Confused’ podcast, he said: "I'll say that the experience of crafting this story has forced me to think about that question. Because there's only so many times that ‘Star Wars’ movies can revisit the same section of the timeline, and so it's really forced me, because 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."

The filmmaker - who has teamed up with his The Adam Project co-writer Tropper on the project - added he was making the flick with "tone and characters" at the forefront.

He said: "I really wanted to craft something that felt organic to me, both in tone and characters, so I think that there is 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 fulfilment, that's Star Wars to me."