The much-touted upcoming Star Wars film starring Daisy Ridley has been put “on hold” at Lucasfilm, numerous reports indicate.
The Star Wars franchise is currently doing what it can to soft reboot while not alienating its extremely touchy fanbase to the point of open revolt, which doesn’t take a lot for them. There has not been a new theatrically released movie in the franchise since The Rise of Skywalker (2019), a massive blockbuster that closed out the Skywalker Saga and left fans with a bit of a sour taste in their mouths.
Related: Report: Luke Skywalker To Return as ‘Star Wars’ Main Character, Disney Rejects New Series
Since then, Star Wars showed a spark of new interest with the release of The Mandalorian, the first live-action franchise TV on the Disney+ streaming platform. After literal decades of focusing on a single Jedi-adjacent family line, a new show focusing on mysterious bounty hunter Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal) and his ward Grogu (himself) initially drew in a huge new audience and critical acclaim.
Unfortunately, more shows followed The Mandalorian, increasingly focusing on legacy characters and building out from the Dave Filoni-created Clone Wars and its esoterica. At this point, Lucasfilm has largely squandered the goodwill and accessibility of The Mandalorian to let Filoni trot his old favorite characters again. The studio’s next big idea? Bringing back more old characters but in a feature film.
Some time ago, it was announced that Daisy Ridley would return as Rey Skywalker for a new film set after the events of Rise of Skywalker. The film is said to involve Rey’s attempts to build a new Jedi Order and, lacking an official new title, is unsurprisingly being referred to as New Jedi Order.
However, it appears that the film has hit some roadblocks. Industry scooper Daniel Richtman has reported that it has been placed “on hold” and will likely not begin filming until 2025 at the earliest. World of Reel has also chimed in, claiming that there are significant and ongoing script problems:
“Steven Knight has been trying to crack the script now for well over a year. A final draft still hasn’t been submitted to Lucasfilm. Knight, who is about to shoot his Peaky Blinders movie, has written a total of four drafts, with Lucasfilm’s Kathleen Kennedy continuously giving him notes on how to improve the story.”
“These issues with Knight come only two years after development on the film started, and various drafts had circulated, with different writers, including Damon Lindelof (Watchmen) and Justin Brit-Gibson taking a crack at it, before both eventually exited the project due to creative differences.”
This is not a great sign, but at this point, no Star Wars movie could possibly have anything other than a troubled production process. Disney and Lucasfilm will only greenlight a new franchise project if it has a high probability of grossing over a billion dollars, which means that it needs to be given a huge budget to ensure that, which then further means that it needs to gross even more and more. So the cycle goes.
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