As soon as Eternals director Chloé Zhao outed herself as a lifelong Star Wars fan, and then said she’d jump at the chance to reunite with her Marvel Cinematic Universe boss Kevin Feige in a galaxy far, far away, it was inevitable that her name would jump to the forefront of the rumor mill.
While the recent cosmic epic has hardly been going down a storm with critics, a $162 million global opening weekend is the second-highest of the pandemic behind only No Time to Die, and let’s not forget that the filmmaker has a pair of Academy Awards to her name after winning Best Director and Best Picture for Nomadland.
All we know about Feige’s in-development project is that Loki and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness scribe Michael Waldron is penning the script, but One Take News is now claiming that Zhao is in line to take the reins on another Disney-backed sci-fi blockbuster.
While it hasn’t been made official or corroborated by anyone from Lucasfilm as yet, it wouldn’t be the biggest shock in the world were it to happen. Take an award-winning director, reunite them with the producer that handed them the biggest project of their career and drop them into another franchise owned by the same studio that they happen to have an affinity for, and it makes a great deal of sense for Zhao to board Star Wars.