Disney pulls Patty Jenkins’ Star Wars movie from the schedule

As if millions of voices suddenly cried out and said, “yeah, I saw this coming,” Disney has apparently dumped Patty Jenkins’ Star Wars movie Rogue Squadron from its upcoming release schedule, meaning the film—if it’s happening at all—won’t be happening any time soon (that’s according to The Hollywood Reporter).

The reason that doesn’t seem surprising, beyond the fact that Disney just makes Star Wars TV these days and not Star Wars movies, is that we heard last year that Jenkins reportedly didn’t really have room for Rogue Squadron in her schedule. She has Wonder Woman 3 coming at some point and is working on a Cleopatra movie, and Star Wars movies tend to be a lot of work (you’ve gotta make those miniature spaceships, you’ve gotta CG all puffins into Porgs, and you’ve gotta lock down your Twitter account so people can’t send you hate mail).

Whatever the reason, it must be a good one: When Jenkins first announced the project in 2020, she pitched it in a teaser video as an intensely personal film that would’ve addressed both her love of Star Wars and the death of her fighter pilot father when she was a kid. The teaser was all about her putting on a Star Wars flight suit and hopping in an X-Wing, so in lieu of any footage of detailing the premise, they were just selling it on the fact that Patty Jenkins was going to make it and that she really wants to make a movie about fighter pilots.

As far as we know, the only Star Wars movie that is currently in development at Lucasfilm and Disney is Taika Waititi’s project, which we know nothing about (beyond safe assumptions you could make based on the rest of the Waititi canon, like his sense of humor and his tendency to give himself cameos). Or maybe there will never be a Star Wars movie again, which… may not be the worst thing? The TV shows are okay, with their lower-stakes and eager-to-please fan-service. Maybe Lucasfilm should focus on not ruining Indiana Jones 5 for now.