After staying in development limbo for nearly three years, Wonder Woman director Patty Jenkins is finally returning to draft a script for the upcoming Star Wars movie Rogue Squadron. Originally pulled away to work on other projects, Jenkins was able to work out a new agreement with LucasFilms to return to the project.
Jenkins was signed on as Rogue Squadron’s director in 2020, but she soon had to leave to work on Wonder Woman 3. When that film fell through, Jenkins re-entered conversations with LucasFilms to find a way to become a part of the project again. Eventually, they developed a contract just as the strikes began to draft a screenplay for Rogue Squadron. Jenkins explained, “They have other directors who have been working, but I am now back on doing Rogue Squadron. We’ll see what happens. We need to get it to where we’re both super happy with it.”
Rogue Squadron has endured serious development hell thanks to the various directions that the company wanted to take. While Jenkins was working out a new deal, LucasFilm’s president Kathleen Kennedy proposed that Rogue Squadron would make a better TV series than a movie. However, Disney CEO Bob Iger countered this point by noting that Marvel “diluted its audience by doing too many TV shows,” which was a contending point for critics worried about LucasFilm’s new direction.
Now that the project is underway again, Jenkins feels confident in her desire to share her passion for its story and fighter pilots. She claimed that Star Wars was inspired by World War II, “so in that way [she has] always wanted to make a fighter pilot movie.” She clarified later that her father was a veteran who “lost his life in service,” creating an urge to create a story from “all of that tragedy and thrill.”
Even if Jenkins won’t get a chance to be the director for this feature, it has still offered her a great chance to leave her fingerprint on a pop culture leviathan.
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