It’s been over three years since Lucasfilm officially announced that acclaimed writer and director, Taika Waititi, had signed on to co-write and direct a Star Wars movie. Over the course of those three years we’ve learned very little about the project and have seen little to no progression in regards to the feature film making it onto the big screen. Despite Lucasfilm announcing a handful of new movies at this years Star Wars Celebration, which Waititi’s film was not a part of, the Thor: Love and Thunder director has confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter that he is still in-fact working on the untitled movie.
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In a recent interview with THR, Waititi was asked about his long in development Star Wars feature along with a bevy of others projects his name has been attached to. Regarding his long overdue Star Wars flick, Waititi confirmed to the outlet that he’s still working on the highly anticipated project with Waititi saying, “I’ve got a really good idea for it. It’s just with all films, it’s the middle part. You’re like, ‘What’s going to happen?’ And then you look at all of those [Star Wars] films that are so great, you’re like, ‘Well, I guess they can’t meet a smuggler with an alien sidekick.”
Waititi’s latest comments about his Star Wars effort echo that of Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy, who recently claimed that Taika was a slow writer and that his script simply needs a third act. However, from what we can gather from Waititi’s comments, he’s not quite made it to the third act and is still figuring out the second. This shouldn’t come as much of a surprise given that it appears Taika Waititi is seemingly now writing his Star Wars film alone, and is no longer penning the project with 1917 scribe, Krysty Wilson-Cairns, who was working with the Jojo Rabbit writer on the movie until at least the tail end of last year.
I do not know this, but I assume that Taika began a rewrite of the project, maybe at the end of last year or the start of this, given the departure of Wilson-Cairns who worked on the project with Waititi for over two years and the fact that Taika is only now penning the second act after three years of work. It’s also worth mentioning the current Writers Guild of America strike which forbids the filmmaker from continuing to work on his script until an agreement is made between the guild and film and television studios. In THR piece, Taika Waititi reveals that the WGA strike is providing the filmmaker an opportunity to go on vacation and to spend some time with his popstar wife, Rita Ora, “For the most part, I would like to take a few holidays and go and follow Rita around. Just be her little tour toy boy and hang out with her and just watch her perform and get her a cup of tea backstage.” Given the aforementioned strike and where the writer-director is writing process of his Star Wars script, it’s more than likely he will not complete the script for quite some time, and before we mention the growing list of additional projects he’s set to write and/or direct.
As of today there are at least four Star Wars movies in development – the Daisy Ridley led New Jedi Order movie set after the events of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Dave Filoni’s ‘MandoVerse’ crossover flick, James Mangold’s movie that focuses on the first ever Jedi, and of course Waititi’s mysterious movie. In addition, Rian Johnson is still slated to pen a Star Wars trilogy, but his busy schedule with his Knives Out franchise and Peacock series, Poker Face, have prevented him from breaking ground on the three movies and Patty Jenkins’ Rogue Squadron film could be repurposed into a Disney+ series.
Taika Waititi’s next directorial effort, Next Goal Wins, is slated to release on November 17th in cinemas.
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