Barry Keoghan Wants Part in Taika Waititi’s Star Wars Movie

Barry Keoghan is already a favorite of The Dark Knight director Christopher Nolan, as well as filmmaker Matt Reeves’s next Joker. But he also wants to work with Thor: Ragnarok and Jojo Rabbit filmmaker Taika Waititi. Specifically, he wants to nail down a role in Waititi’s planned Star Wars film, and in a new interview, he revealed that he’s being fairly shameless about trying to get a meeting for it. The film is expected to start shooting in early 2023, marking the first new Star Wars feature film to make it to the production phase since the end of the Skywalker Saga with Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker in 2019.

According to a new GQ interview, Keoghan has not yet been invited back for the sequel to The Batman, which is expected to go into production at some point in 2023. But he’s less worried about that, than he is about tracking down Waititi.

“I’m tryna meet him,” Keoghan told GQ. “I’ve been askin’ everyone.”

He also listed a number of filmmakers he wanted to work with, saying that there are about 30 of them, including Andrea Arnold, Lynne Ramsay, Céline Sciamma, the first three off the top of his head, and that he feels like he can be more open when working with a woman director.

Waititi isn’t the only high-profile name attached to new Star Wars projects. Both Marvel chief Kevin Feige and Wonder Woman director Patty Jenkins have been tapped for movies with A Star Wars Story kind of premises, while Spider-Man: No Way Home‘s Jon Watts is expected to do a new Disney+ series after backing out of Fantastic Four.

“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,” Waititi said of his Star Wars timeline. “I’m still trying to figure out what the story is.”

Recently, Friends star Lisa Kudrow was cast in a key role in Waititi’s upcoming Time Bandits reinvention.

Waititi’s Star Wars project was first announced in 2020. There is still not much to know about the project, which is in the writing stage and essentially only exists in Waititi’s head.

“I’m still writing. I’m still coming up with the ideas and storylining it and just wanted to make sure that it feels like a Star Wars film,” Waititi told Screen Rant. “”Because, I could say, ‘Oh yeah, we’ll just write any old thing and set in space and then put Star Wars on the front.’ But it wouldn’t be a Star Wars film without certain elements and a certain treatment, so I’ve just got to make sure that it stays within that wheelhouse.”