Director Patty Jenkins’ “Star Wars” debut film “Rogue Squadron” has reportedly been delayed after initially eyeing a production start date in 2022. The film, which was set to begin pre-production by the end of this year, has been taken off the production schedule for next year, a Disney representative confirmed to IndieWire. The “Star Wars” spinoff movie was originally announced at Disney and Lucasfilm’s Investor Day back in December 2020.
Jenkins has been developing the hush-hush film with writer Matthew Robinson (“Love and Monsters,” “The Invention of Lying”) with Lucasfilm for over a year. But scheduling issues on both Jenkins’ side as well as among the producers and filmmaker team have caused the delay.
Per The Hollywood Reporter, “The hope is that once Jenkins fulfills her previous commitments, she will be able to return to the project.”
“Squadron” was recently set for a December 22, 2023, release from Disney amid other shuffles made to the studio’s release calendar back in October, including a delay on “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” (now May 6, 2022) and “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” (November 11, 2022, though that film faces a new wrinkle with star Letitia Wright still out on medical leave for a set injury).
“Squadron” would have been the first feature to emerge out of the “Star Wars” universe since the Skywalker Trilogy concluded with 2019’s “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.” Jenkins, meanwhile, has a busy slate ahead of her regardless, with development underway on “Wonder Woman 3” over at Warner Bros. and a “Cleopatra” feature still in the mix over at Paramount. Sources told THR that those projects could move up now that “Rogue Squadron” is being delayed.
Back during the Investor Day in December, Jenkins said that “Rogue Squadron” will take inspiration from her father, a fighter pilot, and that she hoped to make “the greatest fighter pilot movie ever made.”
Disney still has two other “Star Wars” movies coming down the pike — the first on December 19, 2025, followed by another installment on December 17, 2027 — though it’s unclear how, if at all, the “Rogue Squadron” delay will affect those productions.
Still, there is plenty more to come out of the “Star Wars” universe, with the Disney+ series “The Book of Boba Fett” debuting in December, and other series including “Obi-Wan” and “Ahsoka” coming up, plus Season 3 of “The Mandalorian.”
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