Taika Waititi says his Star Wars movie feels "very me"
Waititi, who co-stars in the upcoming Free Guy, says it's still very early days on his next trip to the Star Wars universe
The “Taika Waititi Star Wars movie” has been one of those concepts floating around the pop culture ecosystem for a few years now, a ball of hypothetical potential that might or might not end up ever actually paying off into a real, viewable film. It started way back when (i.e., 2017), when LucasFilm’s Kathleen Kennedy voiced her hope for the Hunt For The Wilderpeople director to lend his talents to that galaxy so long ago and far away. It’s evolved since then, though, through Waititi’s increasingly strong connections to Disney through his Thor movies (and now his co-starring role in Free Guy), and his direction, and voice-acting appearances in, actual Star Wars project The Mandalorian. But while all of those signs point to the increasing likelihood that Taika Waititi might make a Star Wars movie at some point, the fact remains that very little actual evidence of the film has ever seen the light of day.
All of which brings us to a Wired interview Waititi gave this week, pegged to Free Guy, in which he confirmed that…Well, yeah, not much has actually happened on this whole “Star Wars movie” thing. “It’s still in the ‘EXT. SPACE’ stage,” he joked in the interview, i.e., still very much a blank page where a screenplay might someday go. That being said, Waititi did assert that “We’ve got a story. I’m really excited by it because it feels very me.”
Which is an interesting thing to hear, given that Star Wars, as a film franchise, is still recovering from a few previous projects where distinctive creators attempted to fit their styles to the existing franchise, most notably with the eventual firing of Phil Lord and Chris Miller from Solo: A Star Wars Story. Disney has been at least somewhat willing to accommodate more distinctive voices in its various Star Wars side projects—we’re still genuinely psyched for that upcoming anime anthology—but less so when it comes to the films.
Meanwhile, it’s not like Waititi is hurting for work: He’s already finished filming on the upcoming Thor: Love And Thunder, and is still committed to trying to get that live-action Akira movie off the ground.