Rogue Squadron, the troubled Star Wars movie, has been removed from Disney’s motion picture schedule, meaning it currently has no Star Wars theatrical release in the pipeline.
The news came in a scheduling update sent to media Thursday afternoon, which made changes to 11 Disney movies that have or had premiere dates scheduled between March 2023 and July 2024.
Patty Jenkins, the director of 2017’s Wonder Woman and its 2020 sequel, was brought aboard to direct what Lucasfilm boss Kathleen Kennedy said would be a story set in a “future era of the galaxy.” Filming was expected to begin this year, with a release targeting Christmas 2023.
But in November 2021, The Hollywood Reporter reported those plans had been delayed, with scheduling conflicts and other commitments cited. Jenkins is attached to a third Wonder Woman movie for Warner Bros. and in pre-production, about the Egyptian leader Cleopatra, written by and starring Wonder Woman’s Gal Gadot.
For now, that means all of Disney’s Star Wars eggs are in its streaming TV basket. Already, Lucasfilm has premiered The Book of Boba Fett and Obi-Wan Kenobi on Disney Plus earlier this year, with Andor, focusing on the beginnings of the Rebel Alliance before the Original Trilogy, set to premiere on Sept. 21. The third season of The Mandalorian will launch in February 2023, and shows about Lando Calrissian and the Jedi Ahsoka Tano are also planned.
The most recent Star Wars feature film is 2019’s The Rise of Skywalker which, although it was a commercial success, was still the lowest-grossing of the Sequel Triology and a critical disaster. Its performance, plus an underwhelming reception for 2018’s Solo: A Star Wars Story apparently caused Lucasfilm and Disney to rethink their theatrical plans.
Disney replaced planned theatrical releases for Kenobi and Fett with their Disney Plus adaptations. Motion picture projects attached at one point to The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson and Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, although never formally scheduled or announced, are nonetheless in limbo.
