Taika Waititi Jokes He Will Never Finish His ‘Star Wars’ Script
Taika Waititi is currently at the Toronto International Film Festival promoting his new movie Next Goal Wins. While there, he got to present Shawn Levy with the TIFF Tribute Awards with a highly satirical speech like only Taika Waititi knows how to do. In it, he brought up Levy’s past projects, as well as his upcoming ones, which include a Star Wars movie that he will get around to once he finishes work on Deadpool 3.
When listing Levy’s future endeavors, Waititi jokingly said the following (via Screen Rant and a video by Variety):
“Once he’s had his way with [the Deadpool] franchise, like a cruel and indiscriminate virus, he’ll move on to another, and another, and another… And then eventually, probably Star Wars… And unlike me, maybe this guy manages to finish the script for that.”
Before anything else, we might have to spell out the obvious before the Internet runs away with the wrong impression from the quote or the headline: In no way is Taika Waititi saying his Star Wars movie is not happening anymore. It was a joke — he was poking fun at himself for not having finished the script three years later. Last we heard, he was about two-thirds done with it, though Kathleen Kennedy did say they were having some trouble putting together the third act. Waititi himself recognized some struggles with the writing, and because both of those comments were made after the WGA went on strike, we assume no further progress has been made.
Taika Waititi honors Shawn Levy at the TIFF Tribute Awards: "Shawn has resisted the comfort of sameness in career, resulting in work that is audacious in its range of genres." https://t.co/XkWfqBFsIz pic.twitter.com/kKBOz9In2W
— Variety (@Variety) September 11, 2023
Waititi, the Oscar-winning writer behind Jojo Rabbit, who also directed the last two Thor movies, and of course, the season 1 finale of The Mandalorian, was announced back in early 2020 to be co-writing and directing a new Star Wars movie. He’s since said it will involve new characters and storylines, though no specific point in the timeline or location has been confirmed. Back then, it was announced that he’d be co-writing it with Krysty Wilson-Cairns (1917), who has since silently left the project — we assume at some point there was some creative overhaul behind the scenes that possibly led to some delays. Waititi’s busy schedule hasn’t helped either.
A Deadline report from earlier this year said that Waititi intended to shoot the film in 2024, though that is probably out the window by now, even if it was true at the time. The WGA strike has pushed back the development schedules of most of Hollywood, and Lucasfilm has been no exception. The fourth season of The Mandalorian has pushed back principal photography indefinitely (it was once supposed to start filming in October) and Steven Knight was forced to stop writing for the New Jedi Order film just a few weeks before he was supposed to turn in his first draft. That film, led by Daisy Ridley, was supposed to start filming in April 2024, which seems almost impossible now.
No release date has been announced for Taika Waititi’s Star Wars film, most likely because the writer-director-actor’s schedule is usually all over the place, committing to more projects than he can handle, which results in sidelining many of them. It’s possible that during these months that he hasn’t been able to write, he’s been figuring out in his head how to solve some of those issues he was having, and once the studios finally settle with the WGA, he’ll be able to put pen to paper and finish the draft. (That is, of course, assuming he hasn’t been actually writing in secret, which wouldn’t be the biggest shock either.)
Stay tuned as the situation continues to evolve!
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.
