Taika Waititi’s Star Wars film hasn’t been scrapped by Disney despite it’s absence Star Wars Celebration 2023.
Speaking to Variety at the event, Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy said “Taika is still working away” on the film, and it’s just taking a while because he doesn’t want anyone else helping with the script.
“He’s writing the script himself,” Kennedy said. “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.”
Fans have grown concern over the state of the film as, like Rian Johnson’s trilogy of Star Wars films, years have passed since its announcement without Lucasfilm showing much progression. Waititi’s project was revealed in May 2020 but, outside of the occasional comment from the writer and director himself or Kennedy, has remained out of the limelight.
Waititi said the story was finished as of August 2021, and Kennedy later said the film was therefore targeting a late 2023 release window (which is now impossible). Not boosting fans’ hope, Waititi even said in June last year that he doesn’t even know if the film will be made.
It apparently will eventually though, just not as one of the three newly announced films that Lucasfilm and Disney unveiled at Celebration.
Unlike Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy’s film which will see the return of Daisy Ridley as Rey Skywalker, however, Waitit’s film will feature brand new characters unrelated to the current cast, even if he did ask Natalie Portman if she wanted to be in one.
Thumbnail credit: Photo by Samir Hussein/WireImage/Getty
Editor’s Note: A previous version of this article had a misspelling of Taika Waitit’s name. IGN regrets the error.
Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer and acting UK news editor. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.
