Patty Jenkins (Wonder Woman 1984) is set to become the first woman to direct a feature-length Star Wars film, fulfilling Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy’s prior promise that adding female filmmakers to the mix was a priority for the studio.
Related: Where ‘Rogue Squadron’ is Likely to Fit in ‘Star Wars’ Timeline
The movie, Star Wars: Rogue Squadron, will release in 2023. Following the movie’s big unveiling at The Walt Disney Company’s Investors’ Day event on December 10, Jenkins shared details about where she and her crew are in the filmmaking process — and how excited she is to helm this Star Wars project.
As per Collider:
“We’re very far into the — we’re finishing the treatment basically, which is pretty big. So it ends up being like where you’re fairly close to a well-along screenplay by the time I’m done with the treatment in my process. So yeah, we’ve been working on it for awhile. It’s going great. I’m super excited about it. I’m super excited about the story.”
Although Jenkins didn’t detail exactly what the storyline is — or where, specifically, Rogue Squadron will fit into the overall Star Wars timeline — she did tease who is writing the script for the upcoming installment in the Star Wars movie franchise, saying, “I want him to have his own proper announcement, so I’m going to wait until that comes out.”
Related: Taika Waititi to Begin Scouting ‘Star Wars’ Locations This Year
Jenkins also outlined how she’s managed to multi-task while developing what she hopes is “the greatest fighter pilot movie of all time”:
“You can never do it in one year. You could never do a good ‘Star Wars’ movie in one year or a good ‘Cleopatra’ in one year. I think each of those movies takes two years probably. But I do think, as I even learned on the two ‘Wonder Woman’s, I already had sold a limited TV series [‘I Am the Night’] that I was in love with when they decided to move the ‘Wonder Woman 1984’ release date up. So suddenly it was happening on top of each other. And I was actually able to write a huge treatment and have a bunch of creative meetings and go off and do my show while pre-production was happening for ‘Wonder Woman 1984.’ So there is a lot of ways. Certainly, until I’m on set shooting ‘Star Wars,’ I could be developing all sorts of other things and pushing them forward. It’s actually possible. So, I think that’s apparently how people do multiple things at one time, which I’m usually pretty singularly focused, but I’m getting better at this all the time.”
Jenkins, the daughter of a fighter pilot who gave his life in service, is creating a movie that, according to Collider, “will have a deeply personal connection while also exploring the lives of a new group of Star Wars characters.”
It will be exciting to see Jenkins’s take on fighter pilots in the Star Wars universe given her own meaningful relationship with the profession. In a Twitter video posted just after the movie announcement, Jenkins shares memories of watching her dad fly over her home on base in his fighter jet every day.
We should be in for an amazing new Star Wars story. Jenkins did not share if the movie will have any basis in the Star Wars Nintendo video game series of the same name.
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Rogue Squadron joins approximately 10 new Star Wars series on Disney+ — including two The Mandalorian spinoffs, titled Ahsoka and Rangers of the New Republic — and Taika Waititi’s as-yet-untitled Star Wars movie that is slated for a 2025 theatrical release.
Are you excited about Rogue Squadron? Who do you hope the screenwriter and actors are?