Despite recent updates suggesting that everything was back on track for the Patty Jenkins directed Star Wars movie Rogue Squadron following last year’s “indefinite” delay, it seems that things are currently looking bleak for the movie which has been “pushed off to the side” according to Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy. While discussing where the Star Wars universe is heading in the next few years, Kennedy revealed that Rogue Squadron’s future seems to depend on how well it fit with that plan and its fate will be decided later down the line.

Rogue Squadron was announced as the first Star Wars theatrical release since The Rise of Skywalker, and is still currently sitting with a release date of December 2023. However, there have been a number of shifts at Lucasfilm that have changed the focus of the future of Star Wars, meaning that the likes of Rogue Squadron and Rian Johnson’s Star Wars trilogy just don’t seem to have a place in the galaxy far, far away anymore. While the projects are both said to be “on the backburner” at Lucasfilm, that isn’t something that usually leads to great things in the world of movies. In relation to Rogue Squadron, Kennedy told Vanity Fair:

"We have a road map [for Star Wars feature films]. I would say that Taika [Waititi's] story fits more specifically into that. Rogue Squadron…we kind of pushed off to the side for the moment. Patty is developing the script further. Then we will talk about how that connects to the central spine that we're working on. There's a couple of [filmmakers] that we've been in conversation with over quite a long period of time that I'm hoping will come in and make the overall commitment that Jon [Favreau] and Dave [Filoni] have made. That's ideally what I would love to see happen in the feature space."

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From the comments made by Kathleen Kennedy, it sounds as though Lucasfilm is not looking for writers and directors who want to make one to two Star Wars projects and move on. They are looking for someone who will return again and again with bold new ideas that will take the Star Wars movies back to the top of their game, somewhere they have struggled to reach consistently.

Rogue Squadron’s Patty Jenkins certainly doesn’t seem to fit into that plan, which could be where the troubles with the movie stemmed from last year, when it was reported that there had been creative disagreements about the project. Jenkins is currently focusing on a third Wonder Woman movie and also another Gal Gadot project of Cleopatra, although she has now dropped out of directing that movie. Whether there is any chance of her Star Wars movie making it to cinemas is something that is clearly in the hands of Kennedy and her team now, but with a grander plan being discussed, it looks like Rogue Squadron could find itself permanently grounded.