Patty Jenkins' Star Wars: Rogue Squadron Was Supposed to Be Released Today
The Star Wars film was originally scheduled for December 22, 2023.
Over the years, the Star Wars galaxy has only grown, bringing a number of movies and television spinoffs to life. One of the most-anticipated offshoots in recent memory — the new movie Star Wars: Rogue Squadron — just earned an unfortunate honor. The film, which would have been helmed by Wonder Woman's Patty Jenkins, was originally scheduled to be released this weekend, December 22, 2023. That obviously has not come to pass, with the project not having started production at all after undergoing years of ups and downs.
Rogue Squadron was first announced during the Disney+ Day presentation in December of 2020, hyping it up for diehard fans, even if general audiences didn't know of its existence yet. The announcement was accompanied by a video of Jenkins pitching her concept for the film, which would, according to Lucasfilm, "introduce a new generation of starfighter pilots as they earn their wings and risk their lives in a boundary-pushing, high-speed thrill-ride, and move the saga into the future era of the galaxy."
Rogue Squadron then entered a cycle of development updates, and even as Jenkins stepped down from directing a Gal Gadot-led remake of Cleopatra, and then later parted ways from Wonder Woman 3 amid creative differences, there still was not a clear indication of when and how the film would move to the production stage. The project was then removed from Disney's release calendar in September 2022, and was reported to be canceled altogether in March of 2023. Yet, Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy has hinted that we could conceivably still see Rogue Squadron someday, whether it be as a movie or as a Disney+ series.
"Rogue Squadron, that definitely is something that we still talk about," Kennedy explained in April of 2023. "Whether it's a movie or whether it ends up being in the series space, that's definitely something."
What Will Be the Next Star Wars Movie?
Earlier this year, Lucasfilm announced three new films set within the Star Wars galaxy, beginning with a currently-untitled film from Ms. Marvel director Sharmeed Obaid-Chinoy, which will see the return of Daisy Ridley as Rey. Also on the slate is a film from Dave Filoni culminating much of the canon of the Star Wars TV shows, as well as a film from James Mangold about the origins of the very first Jedi.
"Jon [Favreau] and I have our own little theater that we've been playing in, but Star Wars is a big galaxy. I think there's a lot of possibilities, but we do things our own way," Filoni told ComicBook.com earlier this year. "I think of, you know, A New Hope is an important moment in the timeline. The Death Star blows up. That changes everything ... A cinematic moment for this time period has to be a moment that's changing things and we understand it as the audience and then it can ripple down if we have other shows going on underneath that. So if there was a show taking place in the New Hope time period that you were watching as a kid, you would understand that things have changed in the show because the Death Star blew up. But they didn't necessarily need to be there. So there's a ton of possibilities for how to tell these stories in a unique way for Star Wars as well."
How do you feel about Star Wars: Rogue Squadron's original release date being today? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!