Wings up?
It looks like the Rogue Squadron film still has some life in it
If there's one thing that I know about Star Wars, it's that its creators are hoarders. I like to think of Lucasfilm HQ as a building stuffed with ideas, and that for all of the concept art, film concepts, scripts, characters, and story ideas, nothing's ever really thrown out: they're just waiting for the right thing.
You see this in shows like The Clone Wars, Rebels, The Mandalorian, or films like Solo: character designs are reused and repurposed, or ideas are stripped from older stories like the Star Wars EU, like Grand Admiral Thrawn.
So, I'm not entirely surprised when I see word that maybe that Rogue Squadron movie isn't dead, just hibernating. According to director Patty Jenkins, she's back to work on the project.
Rogue Squadron is a uniquely exciting project within the Star Wars universe. Rogue Squadron originally shows up in The Empire Strikes Back as the unit of fighters defending the Rebel base on Hoth, and they show up again in The Return of the Jedi. As Lucasfilm continued the Star Wars saga in the 1990s with the Expanded Universe–a mix of tie-in novels, video games, and comic books–the unit became the focus of a multimedia campaign called X-Wing. It began in 1994 with the combat simulator game X-Wing, and publishers Bantam Spectra and Dark Horse Comics reached out to novelist and game designer Michael A. Stackpole. He had become well known for his Battletech novels, and seemed like a good fit to take on the combat-focused exploits of a fighter squadron.
Stackpole began work on a run of comics, which began hitting stands in 1995, and from there, he began writing an initial quartet of novels: Rogue Squadron, Wedge's Gamble, The Krytos Trap, and The Bacta War, which began hitting stores in 1996 and 1997. From there, author Aaron Allston took over for another arc, and Stackpole provided another entry in the series, Isard's Revenge in 1999.
Taken together, these books, comics, and video games etched out a bigger story of the New Republic's efforts to topple the Galactic Republic, one sortie and planet at a time. These novels stood out because they helped demonstrate something that the Star Wars franchise desperately needed: to break away from the core group of the film's heroes (Luke, Leia, and Han), and introduce a new cohort of characters: Corran Horn, Tycho Celchu, Ooryl Qyrgg, Gavin Darklighter, and a host of others. The main film characters did pop in from time to time, but they were side characters in the larger world.
After Disney purchased the Star Wars franchise began work on the sequel trilogy, it faced the prospect of a franchise that would have to evolve in order to survive. With aging actors and a long-standing expectation that the "Skywalker Saga" would consist of three trilogies, they'd have to start looking for new avenues for stories. Alongside those trilogy films, LFL and Disney released two standalone films: Rogue One and Solo. The former was inspired by a line in the opening crawl of A New Hope: how the rebels stole the plans for the Death Star, while Solo recast some classic characters for an origin story. Of the two, Rogue One feels the closest to the spirit of Stackpole's books, even if it wasn't inspired by them. (A lot of people, myself included, assumed that we'd get some sort of Rogue Squadron film based on the title.)
Since then, we've seen the franchise head a bit in that direction, with shows like Andor and The Mandalorian introducing new characters into the world to further expand it. And in 2020, following the release of the Episode 9, it looked like we'd get another entry: Rogue Squadron, directed by Wonder Woman director Patty Jenkins.
Disney announced the project during an Investor's Day presentation, alongside a video of Jenkins explaining that she'd wanted to make a movie about fighter pilots for a long time, and that this was an opportunity to make "the greatest fighter pilot movie of all time." Stackpole chimed in to say that he was excited to see what she'd do with it, with Jenkins noting that they were well aware of his books. The release date was set for December 2023.
But, like a lot of projects, it seems as though Lucasfilm jumped the gun. The studio picked up a writer for the project, but just under a year later, reports surfaced that it would be delayed because of Jenkins' workload: she was already working on Cleopatra and Wonder Woman 3, and it seemed as though the latter would be the first out of the gate. With the entire DC franchise upended in 2022, Jenkins' sequel was shelved, and she confirmed that she'd left the Rogue Squadron project because of her schedule, but that it was still in the development stage and that she was still somewhat involved.
But, it seemed as though it was one of those projects that just wouldn't work out: in 2023, LFL announced a handful of films: a post-sequel trilogy film about Rey, to be directed by Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy (which is apparently going before cameras this year), an origins of the Jedi film from James Mangold, and a Mando-verse film from Dave Filoni. Since then, the studio announced another film, The Mandalorian and Grogu, to be directed by series creator Jon Favreau, which is apparently shooting this year. That's a lot on their plate, but it does seem like the studio and Disney are committed to bring Star Wars back to theaters in a big way.
And now, it looks like Rogue Squadron might be back in the mix. Earlier this week, Jenkins spoke with host Ben Mankiewicz on an episode of the TCM/Max podcast (41:30 mark) and provided an update on its status.
She notes that she had left Rogue Squadron to work on Wonder Woman 3, with the understanding that she'd return once that was finished. When the DC film was canceled:
"Lucasfilm and I were like 'oh, well, we gotta finish this deal.' We finished the deal right as the strike was beginning, so I now owe a draft of Star Wars. And so we'll see what happens there. Like, who knows? It's a–they have a hard job in front of them, of what's the first movie they're going to do. They have other directors who've been working, but I'm now back on doing Rogue Squadron and we'll see what happens. We need to develop–you know get it to where we're both super happy with it."
From there, she notes that she's very excited to be working on the project, and about what its appeal is for her, noting that the original films came out of the post-WWII era, and she's always wanted to make a fighter pilot movie. "I always had a hard time with it because I'm in love with the jets of the '70s and '80s, and that's not where the great dogfight stories are. And so Star Wars becomes a great playground for that. If I can do something beautiful and do something that serves that audience and is great, I would love to do it, of course."
As far as updates go, this is a pretty small one: this particular film is far from a done deal and as we've seen already it's already experienced its share of ups and downs. I recently listened to a podcast called Going Rogue, about the behind-the-scenes efforts to film Rogue One and Solo, and I found that to be a particularly enlightening experience to understand just how complicated the entire lifecycle of these projects can be. From concept to premiere, these are films that undergo an incredible amount of writing, re-writing, and preproduction work before cameras start rolling on sets.
Even once a script is locked, the decisions that the actors, directors, editors, and writers make to the story and characters means that the final product can be vastly different from what they set out to make.
I'll admit: I'm paying close attention here because this segment of the Star Wars franchise speaks loudly to me. I adore the non-mystical chunks of the franchise that stories like Stackpole's Rogue Squadron and productions like Rogue One and Andor depict. Listening to Jenkins on this podcast, it feels like she has the right amount of enthusiasm and passion for the film, and if she can get it through the gauntlet of writing and preproduction, I think the potential is there for an exciting film–if it gets made.
But even if this film doesn't materialize, I imagine that whatever's generated, whether it's the concept, characters, designs, or initial screenplay, some element of it will appear in some form down the road. So, we'll see!