With Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker now out in theaters, all eyes are on Disney to figure out what form Star Wars will take when it hits theaters next. The company has a number of irons in the fire, and is reportedly adding in another one: The Hollywood Reporter says that Lucasfilm has approached Taika Waititi to come up with a film for the franchise.
Please, please, please let this be an IG-11 origin story.
Waititi’s most recent film, Jojo Rabbit earned six Oscar nominations (including one for best director), and he’s received considerable acclaim for his work on Thor: Ragnarok. He’s also been tapped to direct the next Thor film, Love and Thunder, which is set to hit theaters in 2021. The actor/director is no stranger to Star Wars: he directed The Mandalorian‘s final episode, “Redemption”, and voiced the assassin droid, IG-11, in the series.
THR notes that it’s not clear if Waititi is being brought in on the project that Marvel Studio chief Kevin Feige is already working on, or if it’s a separate project altogether.
Lucasfilm already has a number of projects in the works: a second season of The Mandalorian (sadly, IG-11 didn’t survive the final episode), as well as other streaming shows based on Obi-Wan Kenobi and Cassian Andor. The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson is “still talking to Lucasfilm” about his announced trilogy, but Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss have since dropped the project that they were developing. That development seems to have set Disney and Lucasfilm back a bit, as Disney CEO Bob Iger subsequently confirmed that the franchise was putting its feature films on “hiatus” for the time being, opting to focus on its streaming shows in the meantime.
It makes sense that Disney would turn to Waititi, who has ample experience working with Disney and Lucasfilm. There’s been widespread speculation that Disney could be using its streaming shows like The Mandalorian as a way to bring in new directors to the franchise. In addition to Waititi, Deborah Chow, Rick Famuyiwa, Dave Filoni, and Bryce Dallas Howard have all directed episodes of the series, and Chow is set to direct the entirety of the upcoming Obi-Wan series. Given the excellence that was Thor: Ragnarok (as well as his latest, Jojo Rabbit), hopefully, we’ll see Waititi continuing to dabble in a galaxy far, far away.
For his part, Waititi posted up a vague response on Twitter: the cover to Fleetwood Mac’s album Rumours.
— Taika Waititi (@TaikaWaititi) January 17, 2020
