What the Hell Is Going on With the ‘Star Wars’ Movies?
We’re exactly one month out from Star Wars Celebration, so it makes sense that Disney and Lucasfilm would want to start setting the stage for any projects they might announce at the convention. Many fans are hoping for news of another Star Wars movie, as there’s been little momentum on that front since 2019’s The Rise of Skywalker. The latest update from a galaxy far, far away feels like another nothing burger: Kevin Feige’s Star Wars movie is out, Patty Jenkins’ movie is also (still) out, and Taika Waititi’s movie is still in the works—now possibly with Waititi’s face in it.
In a new report, Variety reveals that the unnamed Star Wars project produced by Marvel’s Kevin Feige is no longer in development at Lucasfilm. The Feige project, first announced in 2019, had enlisted Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness writer Michael Waldron to pen the screenplay in 2022. That movie is donezo, as is Patty Jenkins’ Rogue Squadron, which we first learned last September. The only new-news to report is that Taika Waititi, Disney’s current most-favoritest boy, is still developing his Star Wars movie, whatever that may be, but now he might star in it with a part “similar in prominence to his standout role as an imaginary Adolf Hitler in his Oscar-winning 2019 feature JoJo Rabbit“—truly a bizarre comparison for Variety to make, but I’m not not interested in a movie about a young Force-sensitive kiddo living on some fascist planet and making friends with an imaginary Darth Vader.
As Gizmodo predicted in an earlier article, Disney and Lucasfilm will most likely announce their new Star Wars movie(s) at Celebration on April 7, during a panel featuring “Lucasfilm’s current crop of live-action filmmakers.” This year’s convention is in London and will also feature panels on the highly anticipated Ahsoka series, Andor, and Obi-Wan.
Variety teased another potential Star Wars movie announcement: Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, the Oscar-winning documentarian who directed a pair of Ms. Marvel episodes for Disney, is said to be attached to direct a Star Wars film based on a script by Watchmen‘s Damon Lindelof and Counterpart‘s Justin Britt-Gibson. Lucasfilm has yet to confirm.
It’s been six years since the last Star Wars movie and since then, the studio has pivoted hard to TV with mixed results: Audiences love The Mandalorian and Andor, but are less enamored with Obi-Wan and The Book of Boba Fett. Rosario Dawson’s Ahsoka series is arriving later this year, there’s another season of Andor in the works, and we’re all hyped to no end for The Acolyte, the new series from Russian Doll creator Leslye Headland. As for the film part of Lucasfilm, it’s mostly been a series of announced projects and filmmakers that are intriguing, but ultimately go nowhere.
Maybe they should just stick to TV.
(featured image: Disney / Lucasfilm)
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