Taika Waititi Says His Star Wars Movie Is 'Very Iced' for Now

Taika Waititi's Star Wars movie is going into the freezer for now. In an interview with Inverse published October 18, the director said the project is being put on ice. He and his collaborators are working on something different together instead. His short version of the status was "It's very iced."

Lucasfilm announced the film on May 4, 2020. Waititi was set to direct and co-write it with Krysty Wilson-Cairns of 1917 (PBS NewsHour). Tony McNamara, the writer behind The Favourite and Poor Things, later took over the script so Waititi could focus on directing, per Inverse. It's also not totally clear who the "different thing" is with. Inverse's wording points to Waititi and McNamara, though Waititi himself didn't name his collaborator.

The movie isn't formally canceled. Lucasfilm hasn't made any statement, and Waititi joked that ice ages do eventually end.

Waititi was talking during the press tour for Klara and the Sun, his new film for Sony's Columbia Pictures. It opens October 23 with Jenna Ortega, Amy Adams and Steve Buscemi. Early reviews haven't been kind, with a Metacritic score of 26 and 27% on Rotten Tomatoes at the time of writing (Metacritic). He also told Inverse he's trying to get about four other movies made. Those include a Charlie and the Chocolate Factory film and the What We Do in the Shadows sequel We're Wolves.

With Waititi's film on ice, Star Wars: Starfighter is the next new Star Wars movie on the calendar, a Shawn Levy film starring Ryan Gosling, Mia Goth, Matt Smith and Amy Adams that opens May 28, 2027 (StarWars.com). Before that, the restored original 1977 Star Wars returns to theaters on February 19, 2027, for the 50th anniversary. Past Starfighter, it gets foggy. Simon Kinberg's reported trilogy, James Mangold's Dawn of the Jedi and a Dave Filoni film are all in development without dates. The Rey movie was reportedly shelved in September (Film Stories).

Waititi's project now joins a long list of announced Star Wars movies that never reached a release date. That list is starting to feel like its own trilogy. My read is that six years of "Taika's Star Wars movie" headlines with nothing to show for them will make it harder for fans to get excited about the next big announcement.

More Star Wars news is right here.

Header image of Taika Waititi by Gage Skidmore via Wikimedia Commons, cropped, licensed CC BY-SA 2.0. Star Wars: Starfighter art from Lucasfilm, via StarWars.com.