Patty Jenkins’ “Star Wars: Rogue Squadron” is…Back…On?!

This is what, the fourth time we’ve heard Patty Jenkins‘ (“Wonder Woman“) “Star Wars” film is back in some form of development? It’s like either someone at Lucasfilm/Disney doesn’t know what to do with it, or, maybe, some parts of the greater press media don’t want it to happen.

Sure, we were disappointed by “Wonder Woman 1984.” Even moreso when it was revealed Jenkins pretty much had autonomy from Warner Bros. Pictures to do whatever she wanted with it. But the result was…that film, that we still can’t bring ourselves to watch again.

But, what if she got to play with X-Wings? In space? Maybe it could be awesome?

“Rogue Squadron” was first announced back in 2020, with a release date of 2023. Obviously, that didn’t happen, and the film has been on-again-off again several times in the resulting years. But Jenkins has remained optimistic that when the time was right, it would happen.

In a recent chat with TCM host extraordinaire Ben Mankiewicz, Jenkins revealed that she’s “back on” doing ‘Rogue Squadron’ for Lucasfilm.

“When I left Star Wars to start working on Wonder Woman 3, I started thinking ‘okay, maybe I’ll come back to Star Wars after Wonder Woman 3. So we did a deal for that to happen,” she said. “But when Wonder Woman 3 went away, Lucasfilm and I were like ‘oh, we’ve gotta finish this deal,’ which we finished right as the strike was happening. So, I now owe a draft of Star Wars, and we’ll see what happens. Who knows, they have a hard job in front of them of ‘whats the first movie’ they’re going to do? They have other directors, but I’m back on doing Rogue Squadron. So we’ll see what happens. We need to get it to where we’re both happy with it.”

Mankiewicz asked if Jenkins would be happy to still do a Star Wars movie, and she doesn’t hesitate to say “absolutely.” “Star Wars is beautiful, because of the emotion, thats what it stands for, something so beautiful in this world.”

“Star Wars was born out of WWII. It’s born from how do you make a metaphor [about that]. So in that way, I’ve always wanted to make a fighter pilot movie. It’s been a dream of mine. I’ve always had a hard time with it, because I’ve been in love with the jets of the 70s and 80s, and that’s not where the great dogfight stories are. So Star wars becomes a great playground for that. Yes, if I can do something beautiful that serves that audience and thats great I would LOVE to do it, of course.”

So, there you have it. We’ll let you know what we hear about this and other news. You can listen to the Talking Pictures podcast episode here, or on YouTube below.