While the Star Wars franchise continues going from strength to strength on Disney+ (well, aside from The Book of Boba Fett's biker gang), the same can't be said for this Galaxy Far, Far Away in theaters.
The Rise of Skywalker was far from a box office flop, but it still underperformed, and planned trilogies from Rian Johnson and David Benioff and D.B. Weiss have fallen by the wayside. Even Patty Jenkins' Rogue Squadron, a movie Lucasfilm hyped with an expensive presentation during Disney's Investor Day appears to have got lost in the shuffle for reasons that still aren't clear.
During this year's Star Wars Celebration, Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy suggested that Taika Waititi's Star Wars movie will arrive in theaters next year. That came as a surprise, especially as it's still being written, and her claims have seemingly been debunked by the Thor: Love and Thunder director himself.
Talking with The Wrap, Waititi was asked about the chances of cameras rolling in 2022. "Not this year. I’m going to be in New Zealand from August until the end of the year with 'Our Flag Means Death' and 'Time Bandits' and during that time I will still be writing," he confirmed. "I'm still trying to figure out what the story is."
Based on these comments, there's little to no chance of this Star Wars movie being released in 2023 and, if Waititi can't crack the story, it could be another project that ends up sidelined.
In a separate interview with Slash Film, the filmmaker was asked if heading into a Galaxy Far, Far Away has meant holding back his more absurd or ambitious ideas. "No, I'm able to kind of bring my tone. At the moment it's just very early, because I still haven't even finished the script," Waititi explained. "I'm still trying to come up with ideas and I'm mostly kind of in that part of the process where it's still very kind of open."
"And when I write, I kind of write every idea I've ever had and then start to kind of chisel it down into something. But I'm still throwing everything at the wall right now."
So, yeah, this one is still a long way off. That's no great reason to be concerned, but it does mean we can expect another year to go by without any Star Wars content on the big screen. It's a good job then that there are still a lot of stories set to be told on Disney+ throughout 2023.