The Hollywood Reporter Reiterates ‘Star Wars’ Film Announcements at Celebration, Taika Waititi Still Developing His Project
Following Bob Iger’s first quarterly earnings report on February 8, Disney is said to be refocusing their market strategy to save costs and make fiscally-responsible decisions, which include developing sequels to three animated billion-dollar films but also laying off 7,000 people. The company is going all in on big IPs, both in quality and quantity, and, according to a new story by The Hollywood Reporter, that mostly affects Marvel and Star Wars. The former will be cutting down on quantity to try to improve the quality, while the latter will be ramping up in quantity and hopefully keeping the quality in check.
In particular, they are referring to Star Wars films. Lucasfilm has delivered on the promise Iger made a few years ago, when he said they’d be pumping the brakes on feature films set in a galaxy far, far away, in an attempt to shift their efforts to television. In the meantime, they’ve been internally developing a few projects, and, following a few bumps along the way, they might be getting back on track and will be announcing that to the world during Star Wars Celebration 2023. This much is clear to everybody, from trade reporters (Jeff Sneider has said so multiple times over the past few weeks) to Iger himself — Disney is absolutely determined on having a Star Wars film in theaters by December of 2025, if for no other reason than they need the cash, and, on average, every time they put out a film, they cash in $1 billion. (That number goes up if you only include December releases.)
Right now, the film that seems to be on track to hit that release date is the Damon Lindelof co-written, Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy-directed feature, which the company has been developing for well over a year and could be shooting as soon as this year. (Speculation has it that Yahya Abdul-Mateen II may be involved as the male lead.) The story will be set in the post-Rise of Skywalker age and is reportedly expected to launch a new era of Star Wars films.
What could a Celebration announcement look like? For starters, confirming that the project is happening is a huge step. We know from reports who is writing and directing, so if they really want to make a splash, they could also announce the leads. According to Jeff Sneider, the reporter that first broke the news about the project, Lindelof had the main actor attached to the story from the moment he pitched to Lucasfilm, so at least one of the leads is set. The film is rumored to be in the casting stages at the moment, which means they could potentially have their female lead by April.
Announcing the title is also very likely, especially considering that when Kennedy told us about Patty Jenkins developing a film for them, she said it’d be called Rogue Squadron, essentially announcing that the days of keeping the title under wraps until the last minute, like they did for the sequel trilogy and Solo, are over. But if they are really planning to blow the doors off the ExCeL Centre, they would confirm the reports of sequel-trilogy characters being involved in the new film, and potentially announce Daisy Ridley’s return as Rey. The actress has been meeting with Lucasfilm on a semi-regular basis over the past few months, and has not shied away from saying she’d love to be back.
Is that all we’ll be getting at Celebration, though? Maybe not. Reading between the lines, it seems that, over the past year and a half, Lucasfilm has been reassessing their film strategy, and has put on hold all films, which include Patty Jenkins’ Rogue Squadron, Taika Waititi’s project (which was once reported to be going into production in early 2023), and possibly others as well. This might all be for the best, as they are seemingly planning out a coordinated strategy for the (interconnected) stories of the upcoming films. Sneider said a few weeks ago on The Hot Mic podcast that the company had a five-year plan set in stone which they would potentially announce in London.
The jury is still out on the aforementioned projects from Jenkins and Waititi. The former reasserted in late 2022 that, following her departure from Wonder Woman 3, she was back at the Lucasfilm camp developing Rogue Squadron, which the studio wants to see made. And according to The Hollywood Reporter, Waititi is still developing his feature film — of course, the problem with him is the long list of commitments on his agenda as an actor, director, and producer. On the flip side, though, it’s been a minute since the trades have reported any new project he’s developing, so he might be slowing things down.
A third film we haven’t mentioned yet is the Kevin Feige-produced project that Alan Horn announced back in September of 2019, and which Michael Waldron said last year he was putting pen to paper on. A few months later, though, Waldron signed with Marvel Studios to be writing the spare-no-expenses Avengers: Secret Wars, so his mind is in a different multiverse at the moment. This is unlikely to be part of said slate.
There is one more project, though, that will hopefully be part of the Celebration slate and which has already been confirmed. We’re talking about Shawn Levy’s film, which Deadline reported on late last year, and which the director has since confirmed to be real. He is expected to begin work on it once he’s finished with Deadpool 3, which shoots this May for a November 2024 release date.
Whether or not Lucasfilm has more Star Wars films in development, we will see. But from where we’re standing, it seems like things are changing over there, and Celebration is going to be a big event this year for the news cycle. And we will be here to tell you all about it, so stay tuned!
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.
