Rogue Squadron (2023)

[darkphoenix21]

After launching the Wonder Woman franchise, Patty Jenkins is ready to go to a galaxy far, far, away. She has been tapped to direct a new Star Wars movie Rogue Squadron for Disney and Lucasfilm. The announcement was made during the Disney earnings presentation Thursday.

This will be the next Star Wars film to be released and will focus on the fighter pilots made famous in the Star Wars films. It will mark the first feature film in the franchise to be directed by a woman.

The film joins Taika Waititi’s Star Wars movie which the studio is also currently developing. Jenkins’ film will be released on Christmas Day 2023.

https://deadline.com/2020/12/star-wa...ns-1234654018/

[jon-el87]

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/patty-jenkins-star-wars-movie-rogue-squadron-delayed-1235044023/

The film's been taken off the production schedule. The reason cited is Patty Jenkins’ schedule and other commitments (preventing it from being filmed in the intended shooting window).

Of course, I wouldn't be surprised if Lucasfilm started getting cold feet after Jenkins' most recent film (that she both directed and co-wrote) got a lukewarm reception. You know, the film that sparked a controversy, because the protagonist has sex with her boyfriend... while he's possessing the body of another person (who haven't given his consent to either).

[jon-el87]

Beginning to notice a possible pattern...

2014: Josh Trank is hired to direct a stand-alone Star Wars movie, following his critical and commercial success with Chronicle (his first movie).

2015: Josh Trank is fired by Lucasfilm, following reports of problems during the production of (his second movie) the new Fantastic Four movie (which bombed both critically and financially).

2015: Colin Trevorrow is announced in August to be directing Star Wars Episode IX. In June, his film Jurassic World (his second film, not counting a short and a documentary) had been released to critical and financial success.

2017: Colin Trevorrow's next movie, The Book of Henry, is released in June. It bombed critically and commercially. In September, Trevorrow was let go by Lucasfilm.

2017: Patty Jenkins releases her second film (her one previous film was the 2003 movie Monster), Wonder Woman, a critical and commercial success.

2020: In December, Lucasfilm announces that Jenkins will write and direct a Star Wars movie. Later that same month, Jenkins' third movie, Wonder Woman 1984, gets released. It doesn't do well at the box office (though, that was with some help of the pandemic), and receives a lukeward critical reception (along with sparking a rape controversy).

2021: Jenkins' Star Wars film gets taken off the production schedule, for reasons cited as her schedule.

It seems like Lucasfilm is trying to pick up some fresh talent, fresh off of their first (Trank) or second (Trevorrow and Jenkins) movie (that is a commercial and critical success), hoping that they'll turn out to be the next Spielberg (i.e. someone who makes critical and commercial hit blockbuster, after critical and commercial hit blockbuster, after critical and commercial hit blockbuster) or something. Then the filmmaker's next project comes out, which ends up not doing good commercially or critically (indicating that they're not the next Spielberg), and Lucasfilm quickly drops them.

[jon-el87]

https://www.cbr.com/star-wars-patty-jenkins-rogue-squadron-creative-differences/

If a new report is to be believed, Patty Jenkins' Rogue Squadron is the latest Star Wars movie to run up against creative differences between a filmmaker and Lucasfilm executives.

I feel like I should point out that Jenkins was once supposed to direct the second Thor movie, but also departed due to "creative differences". The problem might be Jenkins.

I talked about Spielberg in my previous post. Let's look at his history. At 17, he directed a low, low budget film called Firelight in 1964. Then he made a few shorts in the 1960s, including one in 1968 called Amblin'. He moved into television, directing episodes of shows like Columbo. In 1971, he directed the TV movie Duel. Followed by the TV movie Something Evil in 1972, and Savage in 1973. Then, in 1974, Spielberg directed his first theatrical release film The Sugarland Express. The next year, he made Jaws. Jaws didn't have a massive budget (less than $10 million). In fact, while his budget went up a little for Close Encounters, his highest budgeted movie of the 1970s was 1941 (1979), at $35 million. A high budget, thanks to the goodwill of his previous two movies. However, 1941 didn't make record numbers (in fact, it's often mislabeled a "box office bomb"). So, when he did Raiders of the Lost Ark, Spielberg was down to $20 million (less than one million more than Close Encounters).

Ridley Scott's feature directorial debut was The Duelists in 1977. Wikipedia lists its budget at $900,000. Before that, Scott had directed television shows. He has also directed somewhere between 2-3 thousand TV commercials. In 1979, he naturally made Alien... an $11 million movie. Two million more than Jaws, and eight million less than Close Encounters.

James Cameron directed the short film Xenogenesis in 1978. He then went to work for Roger Corman (I can't list all of the (noteworthy) filmmakers in Hollywood, who went through Roger Corman's filmschool). In 1982, he directed (though, was fired) Piranha II, a budgeted at $145,786. He got his big break with The Terminator in 1984... which had a $6,4 million budget (some of it made through guerilla filmmaking techniques, that he had learned working for Corman). Next, he directed Aliens in 1986. Budget: $18,5 million.

George Lucas directed nine short-films in the 1960s. Made his feature film debut with THX 1138 in 1971. It had a budget of $777,777. Then he did American Graffiti in 1973, which had a budget of $777,000 (and was a box office hit). Then he went and made Star Wars for $11 million.

Naturally, with inflation, these budgets get a bit higher. However, the point is that these filmmakers spent years working with little money. They also got a whole lot more filmmaking experience. Just look at Jenkins. She's directed four movies over a period of almost 20 years. Sure, she's also directed a few TV episodes, but it's not like she set aside a bit of her salary from that, then went out and directed multiple low-budget movies, to improve her directing skills. Do you think that John Ford showed up out of nowhere and directed Stagecoach (1939)? No, he didn't (that wasn't even his only film in 1939). He started directing in 1917. Directing multiple low-budget short films, each year, for a lot of years. Made his feature-length debut, by tricking the studio. Gaining work experience and learning the trade, in a way that a lot of these younger filmmakers just don't. They might direct one lower budgeted film, then they get thrown a $150+ million budgeted movie. No doubt, preventing them from learning a lot of stuff. They might have gone to film school, but there is a lot of stuff that film school just doesn't teach you. I'm speaking from personal experience here. They may teach you some stuff, but then you come into the real world and realize that you don't actually know anything. In my case, I studied screenwriting. Sent some scripts for short films, over the summer, to the Swedish Film Institute (hoping for a development deal). All were rejected, in large part because they were felt to be too expensive to produce. I mean one of them (a seven minute movie) took place in the New Mexico desert (among other places), in the 1960s. Okay, that's location filming, in another country (expensive). Oh, and would've required a period vehicle, along with the fact that I had made two real 1960s songs extremely vital to the plot (more costs). They had taught us how to write scripts, not to consider costs and budgets (the rejection taught me, I've learned from it. Will try harder in the future). And I was the one in my group, that tended to hold back. There was another student. She wrote a five-minute script, that had the female protagonist go to a U2 concert and falling in love with Bono (thousands of extras, plus the real U2 = $$$$), then ended with the female protagonist going off on a spaceship to Mars (=$$$$$).

In the documentary Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, the making of Jaws is discussed. Spielberg is described as a director who (among other things) was willing to put aside his ego, when dealing with studio executives. To go back to Jenkins. With Wonder Woman 1984, the studio wanted her to cut either the (long) opening Themyscira scene (that a lot of reviewers have identified as unnecessary) or the mall scene. She refused to cut either. That's ego. That might be the reason for her departure from the Star Wars project.

[costas22]

The problem here is Kathleen Kennedy. All someone has to do is look at the amount of writers and directors that have come and gone in the Disney - Lucasfilm era. She's a terrible producer who only keeps her job due to her gender (imagine a male executive producer surviving after losing money with Solo and creating 3 SW sequels that grossed less money every time?).

Speaking of which, isn't it ironic that Captain Feminism herself interfered with a female director's work so much that the project got suspended? Imagine if George Lucas did that...

That said, Patty's record is kind of shady. WW 1984 was a mixed bag and it only confirmed what many of us suspected: WW 1 was a big success because Zack Snyder as a producer kept the film anchored. No wonder Patty enjoyed working with him. But Kennedy should have known about Patty's tendencies before hiring her. Just like she should have known Colin Trevorrow's, Rian Johnson's, etc etc.

[darkphoenix21]

Disney has removed “Rogue Squadron,” the “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.

https://variety.com/2022/film/news/d...el-1235373972/

I’m going to take a wild guess…it’s unofficially cancelled. Even if they had started filming we would have known who the cast were by now.

[jon-el87]

https://www.cbr.com/disney-told-star-wars-boss-to-stop-announcing-new-projects/

Lucasfilm will no longer announce Star Wars projects years prematurely.

According to Puck, Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy has been advised by Disney to stop announcing new projects years in advance of their release date. The report comes after a tumultuous few years for the Star Wars franchise that saw several film projects and creative partnerships fall apart after initially being hyped up by Lucasfilm and Kennedy. Notable projects mentioned include Patty Jenkins' Rogue Squadron and the planned trilogy of films that were going to be written and produced by Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and D. B. Weiss.

Lucasfilm originally announced Rogue Squadron during Disney Investor Day 2020, with Jenkins set to direct and a release date planned for Dec. 22, 2023. However, after two years in development, the film was removed from Disney's release schedule in September 2022 with the project now considered to be on the back burner. Benioff and D. B. Weiss' trilogy was first reported in February 2018. After stepping away from the project in October 2019 due to previous commitments with Netflix, the project was shelved.