Taika Waititi Is Officially Directing a ‘Star Wars’ Movie
In January, rumors began flying that Lucasfilm wanted Taika Waititi to direct a Star Wars movie. In February, he said he was interested assuming it wasn’t career suicide.
Clearly, he decided it wasn’t.
In a press release cleverly timed to May the 4th, Lucasfilm has announced that Waititi is officially ready to make his Star Wars movie.
Academy Award® winner Taika Waititi, who recently won Best Adapted Screenplay for Jojo Rabbit and directed the widely-acclaimed first season finale episode of The Mandalorian on Disney+, will direct and co-write a new Star Wars feature film for theatrical release. Joining Waititi on the screenplay will be Academy Award® nominee Krysty Wilson-Cairns (1917, Last Night in Soho), who received a BAFTA Award for Outstanding British Film of the Year on the three-time Oscar-winning film, 1917.
Lucasfilm said a release date for Waititi’s film has “not yet been announced.” And they offered absolutely no details about any characters, stories, or settings in the film. Obviously. That’s what Lucasfilm does. (Lucasfilm also confirmed another recent report — that they are developing another Star Wars TV series for DIsney+, this one with Russian Doll co-creator Leslye Headland.)
The movie will probably be quite a few years away, even without a coronavirus pandemic to contend with. Waititi is already working on another Thor movie, Love and Thunder, which is due in theaters on February 11, 2022. So that would mean this Star Wars movie couldn’t possibly be done before 2023, or maybe a year or two after that.
In the meantime, the theatrical future of Star Wars remains very unclear. The only other officially announced projects still in development for the big-screen are Rian Johnson’s Star Wars trilogy, set apart in some way from the previous Skywalker Saga. A movie from Game of Thrones’ David Benioff and D.B. Weiss was announced and then abandoned.
Gallery — Every Star Wars Movie Ranked From Worst to Best: