‘Rogue Squadron’ Still in Active Development, Says Patty Jenkins
Following recent news about Patty Jenkins’ departure from Wonder Woman 3, the director has posted an update on social media to explain and correct some of the information that has been published in the trades. In it, Jenkins confirmed that, with Wonder Woman 3 now in the rearview mirror, she has signed a new deal with Lucasfilm and is actively developing her upcoming Star Wars movie, Rogue Squadron.
Jenkins explained that she had originally left Rogue Squadron after she realized filming couldn’t begin as soon as she’d hoped (for unclear reasons). Hoping not to delay Wonder Woman 3 any further, she moved back to the DC camp and started developing that film — when that happened, Lucasfilm asked her to return to Rogue Squadron once she’d completed work on Wonder Woman 3. A new deal was signed and is still in place, with her saying “that project has been in active development ever since.” She is then quick to emphasize that one can never know whether it will happen or not until the process is complete.
Here is her full post:
— Patty Jenkins (@PattyJenks) December 14, 2022
The timeline of events is currently unclear, as is the level of “active development” the movie is in right now. When the project was stalled (news came out about it in the fall of 2021, but it’s possible it’d happened earlier), a treatment had already been submitted, co-written by Patty Jenkins and Matthew Robinson. Maybe there was a draft of the script in place too, since in early July 2021, she said that they were working very hard on the movie and completing the screenplay. Jenkins had also hired a production designer (Wonder Woman‘s Aline Bonetto), and pre-production was reportedly weeks away from starting.
At that point, according to Jenkins’ letter, something changed that pushed the film down the line. In a recent episode of The Hot Mic, Jeff Sneider said that her story treatment had issues, which could have prompted Lucasfilm to halt development until they had a script in better shape. It’s also possible that around that point they started having conversations with Damon Lindelof, whose Star Wars film is apparently going to be next.
From the looks of things, Lucasfilm remains committed to making Rogue Squadron with Patty Jenkins at some point. With her schedule now freed up, it’s possible that they will be accelerating the timeline and knocking down a solid version of the screenplay. However, it’s unclear if the film being in “active development” means that she and Robinson (and perhaps some other screenwriter too) are working day and night on a new draft, or if they are simply having monthly lunches at the Lucasfilm headquarters to discuss possibilities for the story.
Rogue Squadron was originally scheduled to hit theaters in December of 2023. This past September, Disney finally took it off its official schedule of upcoming theatrical releases. The next Star Wars film to debut in theaters will likely be the yet-untitled, Damon Lindelof-written, Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy-directed project — Disney has reserved a date in December of 2025 for an untitled Star Wars film.
Miguel Fernández is a Spanish student that has movies as his second passion in life. His favorite movie of all time is The Lord of the Rings, but he is also a huge Star Wars fan. However, fantasy movies are not his only cup of tea, as movies from Scorsese, Fincher, Kubrick or Hitchcock have been an obsession for him since he started to understand the language of filmmaking. He is that guy who will watch a black and white movie, just because it is in black and white.
