The Star Wars and Marvel crossover is only happening in comic books, at least for now.
Kevin Smith has now revealed that while writing Star Wars/Marvel: Hope Assembles, he approached the massive crossover with a very different format in mind: an MCU movie.
“Write it like an MCU movie,” Smith said while discussing the book with Jason Mewes on the latest Jay & Silent Bob Are In The Hizzouse. “Write it as if you were doing this as an MCU movie.”
That doesn’t mean Disney, Marvel or Lucasfilm is developing a Star Wars / MCU movie. Nothing of the sort has been announced. But with the two universes officially crossing over for the first time, Smith’s comments naturally raise the next question: could this eventually make the jump from the page to theaters?
Could Star Wars / Marvel Eventually Hit Theaters?
Again, Smith isn’t teasing a movie. He’s explaining how he structured the comic.
But the distinction matters a lot less than it did a few years ago because the wall between the two properties has now been crossed.
Smith says Hope Assembles has so many characters, storylines and payoffs that he kept the rhythm of an MCU movie in his head while writing it. The first issue runs 30 pages, the middle chapters settle into the standard 20-page format, and the finale expands again to give artist David Marquez room for the bigger moments.
The official premise already sounds like a giant-screen event: a reality-shattering spell causes the events of A New Hope to unfold on Earth-616, bringing Luke Skywalker, Leia, Han Solo and Chewbacca into contact with Marvel’s heroes while Doctor Doom aligns himself with Darth Vader and the Empire.
For now, that’s a comic book. But Marvel and Lucasfilm finally allowing the crossover at all is the part fans have been waiting decades to see.
Lucasfilm Had Been Saying No For Years
Smith revealed that Marvel had apparently been trying to get Lucasfilm to agree to this for years.
“Apparently they’ve asked for years, ‘Can we do a story where the Star Wars characters cross over with the Marvel characters?'” Smith said. “Lucasfilm always said no.”
The 50th anniversary of Star Wars: A New Hope finally changed the answer.
Smith says he was working on Marvel’s Jay & Silent Bob: Jays of Future Past when his editor asked whether he wanted to get on a call with Lucasfilm.
The pitch was straightforward: Marvel and Lucasfilm were finally doing the crossover, and they wanted to know whether Smith had a take.
Smith says the initial conversation happened in December 2025. About a month later, he turned in an outline covering all five issues, and by the time he recorded the new episode with Mewes, he had finished the scripts.
The Original Plan Was Marvel Meets All Of Star Wars
The current book is built around A New Hope, but Smith says that wasn’t the original plan.
“Initially in the pitch, the first phone call when I was in Colorado, they said that it was Marvel meets all of Star Wars,” Smith said.
Smith was the one who argued against trying to cram the entire original trilogy into five issues.
His suggestion: do Marvel meets A New Hope now for its 50th anniversary, then leave The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi available for their own anniversary crossovers down the road.
Smith says Marvel and Lucasfilm liked the idea, and keeping Hope Assembles centered on the original film became a hard rule for the story.
That does not mean Marvel has greenlit Empire and Jedi sequels. Smith was talking about how he narrowed the current book. But he’s already handed them the obvious roadmap if Hope Assembles hits.
There Are Literal Rules For Lightsabers vs. Marvel
Then Mewes got to the question every comic fan was eventually going to ask.
What happens when a lightsaber hits Wolverine’s adamantium claws?
Or Captain America’s shield?
Smith wouldn’t give away the answers, but he confirmed Marvel and Lucasfilm have already settled them.
“There were literally rules about that,” he said.
Smith described the editorial discussion as surprisingly serious, with questions including whether a lightsaber can cut through Cap’s shield, Wolverine’s claws, Hulk, or the Thing.
“These are no small matters,” Smith recalled the editors telling him.
He said there were “hard fast rules” about where the story could and couldn’t go.
Everyone On That Cover Is Actually In It
David Marquez’s massive connecting artwork isn’t just throwing characters onto the cover to sell variants, either.
As Mewes worked his way through characters including Darth Vader, Doctor Doom, Hulk, Thanos, Wolverine, the Guardians of the Galaxy, Venom and Ultron, Smith confirmed the roster is real.
“Everyone on that cover is literally in it,” Smith said.
That’s why he described the writing process as a constant exercise in setting up and paying off different characters and story threads, another reason he approached it with an MCU-sized structure in mind.
Smith Almost Talked Himself Out Of It
For all the childhood wish-fulfillment involved, Smith admitted his first instinct when he got the job wasn’t an automatic yes.
“When they first offered me the job… I hesitated because I was like, ‘All right, you know what? Maybe I shouldn’t do this because I don’t want to get yelled at again by a bunch of people online,'” Smith said.
Then he thought about the kid who grew up reading both Marvel and Star Wars comics and realized how ridiculous it would be to turn down the opportunity because people on the internet might hate what he wrote.
“Go tell that kid that, like, one day when you grow up, they’re going to let you play with the toys,” Smith said of imagining the conversation with his younger self.
So he took the job.
Whether Disney ever tries the same thing in live action is another question entirely. Smith isn’t saying it will. What he has confirmed is that after years of Lucasfilm saying no, Marvel finally got the door open, and he wrote the first crossover as if it were already a movie.
Star Wars/Marvel: Hope Assembles #1 launches in January 2027.
