When high-profile films experience behind-the-scenes issues, you often see studios and folks involved cite other, smaller issues as the primary reason. The joke is that “scheduling conflict” is often never truly a scheduling issue. And according to a report from Puck, that seems to be the issue with the recently-unscheduled “Star Wars: Rogue Squadron.”
According to Puck, the news that ‘Rogue Squadron’ was pulled from the Lucasfilm release schedule (from its original December 2023 date) isn’t an issue with scheduling, at all. Apparently, the issue is reportedly creative differences surrounding the script for the film. The report claims that Lucasfilm and Patty Jenkins weren’t able to agree on the direction of the script, and because of this, ‘Rogue Squadron’ has been shelved.
Of course, if you’ve been following along with the “Star Wars” film saga since Disney purchased Lucasfilm nearly a decade ago, you know the big boss, Kathleen Kennedy, has experienced quite a bit of behind-the-scenes drama already. The biggest examples are with ‘Rogue One,’ which was reportedly completely overhauled by Tony Gilroy in post-production, requiring massive reshoots just to fix it. Perhaps the most publicized issue was on ‘Solo,’ which saw Kennedy and filmmakers Lord & Miller part ways during production, only to have director Ron Howard come aboard to finish the film. In the case of ‘Rogue One,’ the finished product was seemingly salvaged pretty well, but with ‘Solo,’ the spinoff feature went on to get middling reviews and the worst box office of the modern “Star Wars” era.
But even the main “Star Wars” sequel trilogy wasn’t without issues, as ‘Rise of Skywalker’ had behind-the-scenes issues with original filmmaker Colin Trevorrow being replaced by J.J. Abrams seemingly at the last minute, resulting in a film that feels cobbled together with a subpar story.
All that to say, having behind-the-scenes issues between Lucasfilm and the filmmakers hired is nothing new. And if that’s the case with Jenkins and ‘Rogue Squadron,’ we can’t be incredibly surprised. However, the real effect of this move is just on the overall state of the franchise in cinemas. With ‘Rogue Squadron’ seemingly indefinitely shelved, that means it’s unlikely that “Star Wars” will have a new film ready by December 2023. That means 2024 (five years after ‘Rise of Skywalker’) will be the absolute earliest we’ll see “Star Wars” back on the big screen. That’s a pretty unbelievable notion, when you consider just how valuable the franchise is to Disney, overall. It’s almost baffling.