UPDATE! Taika Waititi’s ‘Star Wars’ Project Remains in Development While ‘Obi-Wan Kenobi’ Season 2 Has Not Been Greenlit Yet, Says Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy
No, the Star Wars project from Taika Waititi has not been quietly axed, according to Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy. She also addressed rumors about Rian Johnson’s still-nowhere-to-be-seen films and the possibility of another season of Obi-Wan Kenobi.
Talking to Variety, Kathleen Kennedy explained that despite the emphasis on the newly-announced Star Wars movies by Dave Filoni, Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, and James Mangold, the absence of certain directors on existing projects does not mean that their projects are not moving forward anymore. To the contrary, she stated that Taika Waititi is still hard at work on his script:
“Taika is still working away. He’s writing the script himself. He doesn’t really want to bring others into that process and I don’t blame him. He has a very, very unique voice. So we want to protect that and that’s what he’s doing. But we’re going to make that one day.”
Taika Waititi was previously working on the script alongside 1917 scribe Krysty Wilson-Cairns, but it appears that she has moved on from the project as he focuses on making the script his own. Unlike that untitled project, no update was provided for the film set to be directed by Shawn Levy, who was announced to be helming a Star Wars project of his own last November. For lack of an explanation, we should assume that the same situation applies to him. Kennedy did, however, address the status of the Rian Johnson projects, once again affirming that they will be made on his schedule, as he’s currently focused on a lot of other things, like the third Benoit Blanc film for Netflix and the second season of Poker Face for Peacock:
“Rian and I talk all the time. He is unbelievably busy. So we’re not actively involved in anything at the moment because he’s doing another one of the Glass Onion movies and then God knows what else. But he really wants to step back into the space. It’s a big commitment of time, so that’s really on him.”
It appears that it will be a long time until Johnson starts work on Star Wars again, when and if that ever happens. To shift the focus back to now and on the subject of films that were announced this weekend, the return of Daisy Ridley as Rey Skywalker served as one of the most-discussed turn of events at the panel. Per Kennedy, Ridley was easy to sell on more Star Wars, and she was more than happy to appear yesterday at the convention:
“It was a pretty straightforward phone call. I started out by just saying, ‘Hey, I think we’re getting near being ready.’ We’ve been talking a lot about what we’re doing in the movie space and I said, ‘I think we’re getting close to being ready. How would you like to go to Celebration?’ That was really the beginning of it. She was out of her mind excited.”
The conversation also shifted toward the future of Disney Plus. While Obi-Wan Kenobi was an enormous hit for the streaming service, Kennedy has stated that Lucasfilm is not actively developing a second season at this moment in time (with their focus on their slate of shows for 2023 to 2024 and the newly-announced films). However, she said that they are certainly open to the idea of doing more:
“That is not an active development, but I never say never, because there’s always the possibility. That show was so well-received and [director] Deborah Chow did such a spectacular job. Ewan McGregor really wants to do another. Everybody’s all hands on deck with what we’re doing right now, as you can see by what we showed everybody [at the Celebration]. We’ll turn our attention to that again maybe down the road.”
As it stands right now, Lucasfilm has two release dates scheduled for future Star Wars movies: December 19, 2025, and December 17, 2027. Of the three announced projects at Celebration, James Mangold’s will be a “biblical epic” depicting the ancient past of the Jedi and the galaxy far, far away. Meanwhile, Dave Filoni’s movie will serve as a culminating event in the saga of television shows kicked off by The Mandalorian, and Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy’s will bring back Daisy Ridley to play Rey Skywalker in a story set 15 years after The Rise of Skywalker as she helps train the next generation of Jedi. Details on Taika Waititi, Shawn Levy, and Rian Johnson’s projects remain vague.
Conversely, Kathleen Kennedy has insisted that Kevin Feige’s Star Wars project never went anywhere, and it doesn’t appear to be in a position to move forward as he currently sorts out an ambitious Marvel slate. In the meantime, Rogue Squadron has been put on the back-burner — seemingly without the involvement of previously-announced director Patty Jenkins — but the studio is open to revisiting the project, either on film as originally planned, or redeveloped into a television series.
UPDATE!
Apparently, there’s a reason why there’s going to be a bit of a hold-up on a Star Wars film written and directed by Taika Waititi: the buzz around town is that his next project is an adaptation of Akira, which he previously worked on before pausing to make Thor: Love and Thunder first. Here’s what Deadline reporter Justin Kroll had to say:
Again nothing set in stone as the film would go through regular process before greenlight including figuring out a budget but sounds like all his focus is on that project
— Justin Kroll (@krolljvar) April 8, 2023
Akira is a project that Warner Bros. has been trying to adapt on film for decades, and ultimately Taika Waititi might be one of the few directors capable of actually getting the project made, so it seems that his Star Wars will just have to wait.
Grant has been a fan of Star Wars for as long as he can remember, having seen every movie on the big screen. When he’s not hard at work with his college studies, he keeps himself busy by reporting on all kinds of Star Wars news for SWNN and general movie news on the sister site, Movie News Net. He served as a frequent commentator on SWNN’s The Resistance Broadcast.
