Patty Jenkins has been open in the past about the battles she faced with Warner Bros. during post-production on Wonder Woman, but it sounds like she won’t be facing anywhere near the same level of pushback as she gears up to a galaxy far, far away when Star Wars: Rogue Squadron begins production.
Naturally, some fans might be a little concerned about Jenkins being given increased oversight looking at the overlong and frequently bloated mess that was Wonder Woman 1984, but being told you’re getting autonomy on Star Wars is a lot different from having it actually happen. Kathleen Kennedy infamously rules the franchise with an iron fist, and there’s been no shortage of filmmakers that have signed on to tackle projects set in the expansive sci-fi sandbox, only to bail out or get fired shortly afterwards.
Jenkins might have the opportunity to tell exactly the sort of story that she wants, but in a new interview she also admitted that working with Lucasfilm is entirely different to anything she’s experienced in her career before, so let’s hope that it doesn’t mimic her stint under the ever-watchful eye and notoriously heavy hands of the Warner Bros. top brass.
“It’s going amazing. I had been on it already for six months before I even announced that, so we’re pretty deep into it. We’re finishing a script, crewing up, and it’s all going wonderful. I’m so excited about the story and excited that we’re the next chapter of Star Wars, which is such a responsibility and such an opportunity to really start some new things. It’s really exciting in that way.”
It’s an entirely different way of working. I’m on the phone with all of them and doing Zoom meetings with everybody involved in Star Wars all the time. I’m fairly free to do the story that we want to do, but you really need to know who’s done what, who’s doing what, where it goes and how it works, and what designs have been done before. It’s a whole other way of working that I’m getting up to speed on.”
All we know about Star Wars: Rogue Squadron so far is that Jenkins will direct from a script by Love and Monsters co-writer Matthew Robinson, with the intergalactic fighter pilot epic coming to theaters in December 2023. Based on her comments, though, it sounds like things are progressing nicely behind the scenes, and her effort could prove to be pivotal to the long term future of the property as the first theatrical release to follow the conclusion of the Skywalker Saga.