Patty Jenkins Says She’s Back on ‘Star Wars’ Movie ‘Rogue Squadron’

Patty Jenkins is giving a promising update on her long-presumed-dead Star Wars movie Rogue Squadron.

The Wonder Woman director says she’s back in active development on the project and is working on a draft for Lucasfilm.

“When I left Star Wars to do Wonder Woman 3, and I started working on that, we talked about, ‘Well, maybe I’ll come back to Star Wars after Wonder Woman 3,'” she told the Talking Pictures Podcast. “So we started a deal for that to happen. So when Wonder Woman 3 went away, Lucasfilm and I were like, ‘Oh, we’ve got to finish this deal.’ We finished the deal right as the strike was beginning. So I now owe a draft of Star Wars. So we will see what happens there. Who knows? They have a hard job in front of them of, ‘What’s the first movie [since the sequel trilogy] they’re going to do?’ 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.”

“The emotion of Star Wars and what it stands for is something so beautiful in this world,” she added. “Star Wars was born out of World War II … so in that way I’ve always wanted to make a fighter pilot movie. … So yes, I would love to do it.”

Lucasfilm has developed multiple projects for the big screen, but has had trouble getting one over the finish line following 2019’s Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. The next film to hit theaters will Grogo and the Mandalorian, which arrives May 22, 2026.

Jenkins had been announced as the director of Rogue Squadron in December 2020. The film carried the official description, “The story will introduce a new generation of starfighter pilots as they earn their wings and risk their lives in a boundary-pushing, high-speed thrill-ride, and move the saga into the future era of the galaxy.” The project, Jenkins added in a subsequent interview, had been in development at Lucasfilm for a long while.

Then, in November 2021, The Hollywood Reporter reported the film was delayed due to Jenkins’ commitments to other projects, and it was officially taken off of Lucasfilm’s production schedule.

But in late 2022, as Jenkins exited Wonder Woman 3 at Warner Bros., Jenkins revealed she had made a new deal with Lucasfilm to continue working on the script, suggesting that without Wonder Woman on her docket, Rogue Squadron might be more feasible.

Five months, later in April 2023, Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy confirmed Rogue Squadron will continue to be discussed but might be re-imagined as a TV series. In November 2023, however, Disney CEO Bob Iger said Marvel diluted its audience by doing too many TV shows — a charge that some have also said about the company’s Star Wars efforts.

Jenkins previously opened up about the concept and her personal attachment to the premise: “When [my father] lost his life in service to [the United States], it ignited a desire in me to turn all of that tragedy and thrill into one day making the greatest fighter pilot movie of all time. But try as I might and look as I did, I couldn’t find the right story ever. I kept looking and looking, but I just couldn’t find the right one. Now, I found a story about two things I love.”