Rogue Squadron, a movie loosely based on both the books and the games of the same name, has been delayed. The film was scheduled to be the next big Star Wars release, with director Patty Jenkins attached, but production has now been delayed (thanks, Hollywood Reporter).
Apparently the director’s schedule was simply too rammed to move into production on the movie in 2022 and thus it’s now in limbo: the release date remains December 22, 2023, but that is likely to shift.
Rogue Squadron was revealed in December 2020 and, at the time, Jenkins said she was inspired by her father’s life as a fighter pilot and wanted to make the “greatest fighter pilot movie ever made.” The film is intended to be “something original with great influence from the games and the books […] There’s a lot of things being acknowledged and understood about the greatness of all of those things.”
Jenkins is probably best-known for directing Wonder Woman and is currently directing the third film in that series, but also directed Monster and episodes of various TV shows from Arrested Development to The Killing. She’s also working on a Cleopatra feature for Paramount.
Rogue Squadron the game was released in 1998, an arcade space combat sim that cast you as Luke Skywalker. It featured a lot of lovingly detailed ships from the movies and bonus levels that let you replay the Death Star trench run and the Battle for Hoth: it was great, and so were the sequels. And if you ask me, the novels were as good as the Star Wars books ever got.
Not that you’ll be short of Star Wars stuff: there’s an untitled movie to be directed by Taika Waititi, several TV shows including a Mandalorian spin-off called Rangers of the Republic, a series starring Rosario Dawson as Ahsoka Tano, and a series set 10 years after Revenge of the Sith called Obi-Wan Kenobi, starring Ewan McGregor and Hayden Christensen. Make you sick of this universe, Disney will.