Lucasfilm is not going forward with two potential Star Wars film projects it had been developing.
According to Variety, Rogue Squadron, the project being developed by Wonder Woman director Patty Jenkins, and an untitled film being overseen by Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige are no longer being worked on and have been shelved by the studio.
Rogue Squadron was announced back in December 2020 during the company’s annual Investors Call as a one-off film that would concentrate on an elite squadron of Rebellion fighter pilots. The film was originally planned for a Christmas 2023 release, but had that date pushed back in part due to pandemic lockdown delays. Disney and Lucasfilm ultimately took the project off the release schedule last September, citing that it still needed more work.
News of Feige’s Star Wars project came in September 2019, with Loki writer Michael Waldron working on the screenplay. No plot details have ever been disclosed about the project.
With the premier of the third season of The Mandalorian just last week, the television side of the Star Wars franchise has been ticking along fairly well. In addition to Mandalorian, Lucasfilm has two other live action series currently in production Ashoka, Skeleton Crew and The Accolyte which are expected to roll out later this year or early next at the latest.
But the company has had trouble continuing the franchise on the big screen which birthed it. When it released in 2019, The Rise Of Skywalker may have wrapped up the overall saga of the Skywalker family and how it ripped a galaxy apart in civil war, but it also divided fans who had differing responses to several of the choices made in the story. And although Lucasfilm has reportedly put a number of potential film projects into development, nothing has progressed far enough to get into actual production.
Disney has had December 2025 targeted for the release of their next Star Wars theatrical film, so the studio will need to decide to either pull the trigger on one of its other in-development projects or push that targeted date back further. Barring definitive reports of its demise, Disney still has The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson’s planned Star Wars trilogy as well as projects from Thor: Love And Thunder director Taiki Waititi and director Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy still in development. (The Obaid-Chinoy has writers Damon Lindelof and Justin Britt-Gibson attached.)
With the Star Wars Celebration fan convention set for the first weekend in April in London, we could get an answer as to the direction of the theatrical side of Star Wars in just a few weeks.
