Lucasfilm Shelves Star Wars Movies From Kevin Feige And Patty Jenkins, Taika Waititi's Movie Still In The Works
There's a fairly sizable disturbance in the Force happening today over at Lucasfilm, as both potential "Star Wars" projects from "Wonder Woman" director Patty Jenkins and Marvel Cinematic Universe guru Kevin Feige have been shelved. That's not to say that all future "Star Wars" films have hit the trash compactor, however — filmmaker Taika Waititi is still very much developing a possible feature set in a galaxy far, far away, one that he may not only direct but star in as well.
The Waititi feature could potentially fill a now-vacant release date slot of December 2025, one that was previously held open by Lucasfilm and Disney for the next "Star Wars" release. What that feature could consist of is still anybody's guess at this point; when /Film spoke to Waititi about the project in July of last year, the filmmaker "still hadn't even finished the script" and explained how he was "still trying to come up with ideas."
Although the confirmation that "Rogue Squadron" and Feige's project have been officially vaporized is certainly a blow, the writing seemed to be on the wall for a while: Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy was on record early last year saying that Feige's film had barely begun to materialize at that time, and "Rogue Squadron" was removed from Disney's release calendar in September.
Disney is still taking its first steps into a larger world
As "Star Wars" fans know, this is far from the first time potential movies set to be made after 2019's "The Rise of Skywalker" have fallen down the Death Star reactor shaft. "The Last Jedi" director Rian Johnson was once due to make an entire trilogy of films, and "Game of Thrones" writers David Benioff and DB Weiss were preparing their own trilogy of "Star Wars" features that were intended to explore the history of the Jedi, only to leave the project shortly before the release of "The Rise of Skywalker."
All of these potential films finding themselves suddenly frozen in Carbonite is another indication of Hollywood's "cinematic universe" woes, and Disney's in particular. While the MCU is experiencing its own growing pains balancing its seemingly never-ending assembly line of content between movie theaters and streaming, Lucasfilm has had decent success with "Star Wars" series on Disney+, receiving a lot of positive attention for "The Mandalorian" (which just entered its third season) and "Andor" in particular. Given all that, there's an argument to be made that "Star Wars" doesn't necessarily need to return to the big screen.
Even so, that doesn't mean Kathleen Kennedy and Lucasfilm are done trying. In addition to Waititi's still nascent project, Variety mentions some sources that claim "Ms. Marvel" director Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy is working on a "Star Wars" film for the studio. While these films remain at a still-early stage, enough that they may also find themselves adrift in space before long, "Star Wars" fans can hold onto hope that, like Yoda once said, "there is another."