Patty Jenkins Offers Exciting Update On Star Wars: Rogue Squadron

If there's a time as a filmmaker when everyone wants a chance to ask you questions, it's when you've just been announced as the director of a new big movie — like, say, a Star Wars movie. And if there's a time as a filmmaker when everyone actually gets to ask you questions, it's when you have a big franchise movie coming out — like, say, something with a superhero in it. 

In other words, it's going to be a busy month for director Patty Jenkins, who was announced last week during Disney's Investor Day presentation as the director of Star Wars: Rogue Squadron, the franchise's first new movie since Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker. Jenkins is currently doing press for her latest movie, Wonder Woman 1984, which means lots of people are getting chances to ask her about her newest project. She's not giving out a lot of specifics, but then again, for something so new on the public's radar, just about everything feels like a huge development.

The Rogue Squadron project does already have a screenwriter, Jenkins told Collider, though she declined to name names, out of a desire not to step on an imminent official announcement. Apparently, the two of them have nearly completed the film's treatment, an intermediate step that outlines the story of the film and helps guide the writer through the completion of the first draft of the script.

That may not sound like much, but Jenkins said her method prizes detail. "It ends up being like where you're fairly close to a well-along screenplay by the time I'm done with the treatment in my process," she told Collider. "So yeah, we've been working on it for awhile." She added that she was "super excited" about the story and talked about her desire to make "the greatest fighter pilot movie of all time" in a video clip that introduced the project. 

Jenkins also told IGN that story was going to be an original one, and not something based on either the Rogue Squadron video game series that originated on the Nintendo 64 in 1998 or the series of X-Wing tie-in novels by Michael A. Stackpole and Aaron Allston that now exist in Star Wars' Legends canon. The franchise's current timeline also includes Alphabet Squadron, who have appeared in two novels by author Alexander Freed, with a third set for release in 2021.

Instead, Jenkins described her movie's plot as "something original with great influence from the games and the books. There's a lot of things being acknowledged and understood about the greatness of all of those things, but yes, it's an original story." It's unknown as of yet whether the film will feature any familiar pilots from previous Star Wars projects, or even during what time period the film will be set. 

Star Wars: Rogue Squadron is currently scheduled for release in December of 2023.