A Galaxy Too Far Away: New Star Wars Movies Shelved
Disney reportedly stopped the production for Star Wars movies from Kevin Feige and Patty Jenkins.
It has been almost four years without a Star Wars movie on the big screen. With the runaway success of The Mandalorian series, whose first season premiered in 2019 just before the release of the latest film in the franchise, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Disney shifted its attention to producing TV shows instead of feature films set in the galaxy far, far away.
This approach was fairly predictable, given that The Mandalorian was a worldwide sensation, bringing 26.5 million subscribers to the Disney Plus streaming service in its first six weeks, while The Rise of Skywalker was blown away by fan backlash and made only half the gross of The Force Awakens (2015).
Several feature films were still in production, however, the most notable being the Rogue Squadron spinoff, directed by Patty Jenkins, who directed DC's Wonder Woman (2017) and its sequel, Wonder Woman 1984 (2020).
The film was to be an action/adventure about a Rebel Alliance starfighter squadron, introducing a new generation of pilots.
Unfortunately, in September 2022, Disney pulled the title from its planned December 2023 release, and now, according to Variety's sources, the production is no longer in development.
Another film to suffer the same fate appears to be an unnamed project from Kevin Feige, the man in charge of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
News of his involvement with Star Wars first surfaced in 2019, with screenwriter Michael Waldron joining the production in May 2022, but no additional information about the movie has been released since.
According to Variety, the film's development has also been halted.
Fans are understandably upset about this turn of events, and especially about the fate of the Rogue Squadron movie. Some of the most outraged fans even took to social media comment sections to demand that Kennedy be fired for her handling of the Star Wars universe.
However, there is some potentially good news. Taika Waititi, the actor and filmmaker most recently responsible for Thor: Ragnarok (2017), Jojo Rabbit (2019), and Thor: Love and Thunder (2022), continues to work on his possible future Star Wars project.
There is also a reported Star Wars movie from director Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, accompanied by Damon Lindelof and Justin Britt-Gibson as screenwriters.
Announcements of these projects could be made at the Star Wars Celebration convention in London on April 7th.