The Star Wars franchise is doing incredibly well right now overall. Success with The Mandalorian on Disney+ has led to a variety of new series announcements there. And on the publishing side Star Wars: The High Republic has taken the familiar brand into an entirely new era. However, the one place where, surprisingly Star Wars has had trouble of late is the big screen, but Lucasfilm hopes to turn that around with the next theatrical endeavor Rogue Squadron.
There's very little we actually know about Rogue Squadron at this point. We know Wonder Woman director Patty Jenkins is helming the film for a Christmas 2023 release, and that, the film will be as much a fighter pilot film as it is a Star Wars movie, but that's about the extent of the details. We don't even know who is handling the screenplay, but based on recent comments from the director to Collider, we may have those details soon when our mystery man makes himself known. According to Jenkins...
I want him to have his own proper announcement, so I'm going to wait until that comes out, but we're very far into the, we're finishing the treatment basically, which is pretty big. So it ends up being like where you're fairly close to a screen, a well-along screenplay by the time I'm done with the treatment in my process. So yeah, we've been working on it for a while. It's going great. I'm super excited about it.
So, there is no finished screenplay to speak of, but the treatment, the basic outline of what the story will be, is essentially done. We can also confirm that the screenwriter of Rogue Squadron is a "he," which pure probability would have indicated, but does narrow down the field of potential names somewhat. It sounds like, if there's going to be a "proper announcement" of who the screenwriter is, it's probably a name we know. That's entirely speculation, but the fact that the name is being intentionally held back is an indication that Disney and Lucasfilm think they could get some promotional mileage out of the announcement.
The question then becomes when will we hear the writer's name. It could be Lucasfilm is waiting until the screenplay is actually done, or far enough along, with a studio happy in what it sees, to feel confident there won't be other people coming in for rewrites. If the announcement was made and then the script ending up being thrown out for any reason, that certainly wouldn't look good.
And considering how big the Star Wars fan base is, and how divided it has been in recent years, there is likely a desire to inspire confidence in the future of Star Wars on the big screen, so this movie will probably be managed quite closely.
