Hardly a surprise as Disney have now officially pulled Rogue Squadron from its December 22nd 2023 release date, removing the delicious thought of a Star Wars and Star Trek film arriving on the same day. With the future of Star Wars on the big screen uncertain – the untitled Taika Waititi project looks most likely to be the next to arrive – and Top Gun: Maverick smashing records worldwide, a GFFA style fighter pilot movie would have seemed to be a sure-fire hit, but for now we wait.
Disney has removed “Rogue Squadron,” the new “Star Wars” film from director Patty Jenkins, from its release calendar. The move comes as little surprise since the tentpole, which was scheduled for Dec. 22, 2023, was taken off the studio’s production schedule in 2021.
The announcement is more-or-less pro forma, as the window for “Rogue Squadron” to start filming in time to complete the movie by next December has very nearly closed. The next big-screen story in the space opera saga had already been delayed in November 2021, reportedly due to scheduling conflicts with Jenkins.
“Rogue Squadron” was expected to be the first “Star Wars” movie to play in theaters since 2019’s “The Rise of Skywalker.” Disney and Lucasfilm is busy developing separate “Star Wars” features — one with Waititi, another with “The Last Jedi” filmmaker Rian Johnson and a third with Marvel chief Kevin Feige — but there’s been little-to-no information available about any of those endeavors, so it’s unclear which of those will be the first to hit theaters.
When Jenkins first announced the spinoff in 2020, she evoked the thrill of watching her late father, who served as a fighter pilot in the U.S. military, and referred to “Rogue Squadron as her desire to “one day making the greatest fighter pilot movie of all time.”
