Rogue Squadron: Patty Jenkins’ Star Wars Movie Gets Surprising Update

As it stands now, Patty Jenkin’s Star Wars: Rogue Squadron movie is still supposed to technically be Lucasfilms’ next Star Wars film due out. It currently boasts a December 2023 release date, despite not having started principal photography or pre-production. Earlier this month, Disney released an updated release slate, and that 2023 date was still included.

Interestingly enough, writer Mike Stackpole—a novelist who is credited with creating Rogue Squadron in the former Star Wars Expanded Universe books—says Jenkins contacted him early on in the film’s development process. A tweet from GalaxyCon started to go viral Sunday afternoon after revealing the news. While that doesn’t mean much for the film getting off the ground and actually filming, it does mean Jenkins and company have wanted to make the flick as accurate to previous iterations as possible.

Word of a Rogue Squadron delay first started to spread last November, after The Hollywood Reporter revealed the film was no longer on Jenkkin’s slate of movies to film in 2022 due to shuffling with Wonder Woman 3 and other projects. Hollywood insider Matthew Belloni went on to share the reasons why Jenkin’s shuffling in a December edition of his newsletter.

“That’s not unusual, of course, but it’s a laughably recurring problem at Lucasfilm under president Kathleen Kennedy, say agents: Top filmmakers are dying to make a Star Wars movie — until they sign on and experience the micromanagement and plot-point-by-committee process,” former The Hollywood Reporter editor Matthew Belloni shared last December.

He added, “It happened to the Game of Thrones guys, David Benioff and Dan Weiss, who were hired to create a new trilogy but bailed. It also happened to Rian Johnson, writer and director of 2017’s The Last Jedi, whose own planned trilogy was shelved. Jenkins wasn’t willing to dick around, and she has other projects, notably Wonder Woman 3 at Warner Bros., where she enjoys more creative freedom.”

While Rogue Squadron continues to float around the development ether, Lucasfilm is also developing Star Wars films with Kevin Feige—which is set to be written by Loki scribe Michael Waldron—and a separate film from Thor helmer Taika Waititi.

Stay tuned for details on the future of Star Wars: Rogue Squadron.