Six years. That is how long Star Wars fans have been waiting for Taika Waititi to take them to a galaxy far, far away, and this week the director finally gave them an answer. It was not the one they wanted.
Speaking to Inverse on Sunday while promoting his new sci-fi drama Klara and the Sun, Waititi confirmed that his long-gestating Star Wars movie is effectively shelved. When asked about the project, he did not spin it, soften it, or hide behind studio speak. “I hate to break this to you, but we’re going to actually put it on ice and we’re working on a different thing together,” he said.
Asked how frozen the project really is, he was even blunter: “It’s very iced.”
The Interview That Stopped the Story
The moment was unscripted in the way only Waititi could deliver. His publicist reportedly jumped in to caution him against saying more, and Waititi, being Waititi, narrated the awkwardness in real time. “Well, there’s your answer. I don’t even know how to dress it up or make it even vague,” he told Inverse. Then, with the smallest crack of the door left open: “Ice ages do come to an end… Who knows?”
The “we” in that answer refers to screenwriter Tony McNamara, the two-time Oscar-nominated writer behind The Favourite and Poor Things. McNamara had taken over scripting duties on the Star Wars project, a development first reported at Star Wars Celebration in April 2025. The two are now collaborating on a different, undisclosed project instead.
The timing is striking. This is not a film that had gone quiet because nobody cared to ask. It was announced with fanfare in May 2020, when Disney confirmed Waititi would co-write and direct a Star Wars movie after his well-received turn directing an episode of The Mandalorian’s first season and voicing the droid IG-11. At the time, 1917 screenwriter Krysty Wilson-Cairns was attached as co-writer. As recently as January of this year, the project looked alive: then-Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy revealed Waititi had delivered a screenplay, describing it as both hilarious and great. Around the same time at Sundance, Waititi himself sounded enthusiastic, saying he wanted to recapture the fun of the original films. The full timeline and quotes are also being covered by People, The Playlist, and Hypebeast.
Nine months later, the movie is in the freezer. Kennedy herself has since exited the top job at Lucasfilm, and the new leadership inherits a growing pile of unrealized Star Wars projects alongside Waititi’s.
Why This One Stings
Star Wars has no shortage of announced-then-abandoned films. Fans have learned to treat Lucasfilm development announcements as wishes rather than promises. But the Waititi project felt different, and that is exactly why this news is hitting the way it is.
First, the director’s connection to the franchise is real and personal. He is not a hired gun from outside the fandom; he directed one of The Mandalorian’s most memorable episodes, the season one finale that set up one of the show’s defining twists. His comedic instincts shaped IG-11 into a genuine fan favorite. When Disney tapped him in 2020, the fit felt obvious.
Second, Waititi was remarkably open about what he wanted to do. He was not chasing the legacy timeline or recycling familiar faces. “I was trying to work in a world that was a little bit separate,” he has said of the concept, explaining that with so much going on in the franchise’s main storylines, his film would need to be its own thing. The goal, as he described it earlier this year: harnessing a little bit more of the fun from the original films, the feeling he remembered from watching them as a kid. High stakes and serious things going on, sure, but fun too.
That is a pitch a lot of fans have been begging for, quietly, for a decade. And now it sits under a layer of ice.
Four Other Movies Are Taking Its Place
Waititi is not short of work. When he told Inverse he has “about four other movies” he is trying to do, he was barely exaggerating. Here is what is on the slate now that the Star Wars film is parked:
- Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: a fresh feature take on the classic story, firmly in Waititi’s whimsical wheelhouse.
- We’re Wolves: the sequel to the What We Do in the Shadows spin-off, bringing back the werewolf crew.
- The Incal: an adaptation of the cult sci-fi graphic novel, arguably the most ambitious item on the list.
- Barn 8: based on Deb Olin Unferth’s satirical novel, a quirkier left-field pick.
Plus there is the immediate priority: Klara and the Sun, his adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel about an AI companion, which hits theaters on October 23. That film is the reason he was sitting for the Inverse interview in the first place, and early coverage suggests it is the kind of prestige sci-fi that could put him right back in the awards conversation.
What It Means for Star Wars
The bigger question is not really about Waititi anymore. It is about what this pattern says about the state of Star Wars on the big screen. The franchise has one of the most devoted audiences on the planet and an effectively bottomless library of characters, eras, and corners of the galaxy to explore. Yet movie announcements keep following the same arc: excitement, years of silence, a jokey update from the director that doubles as an obituary.
Waititi himself turned the slow development into a rough running gag long before this week’s confirmation. He joked about it in interviews, waved off questions with a smile, and generally acted like a man who knew the film was never quite going to happen. The honest version of this story may be that the punchline was the plan all along, or at least that the friction between his loose, improvisational style and Lucasfilm’s famously tight creative oversight was never going to resolve.
There is also the leadership factor. Kennedy’s departure marks a genuine transition point for Lucasfilm. New leaders tend to audit inherited slates, and projects without momentum are usually the first to go. Waititi’s film, which had a delivered screenplay but no production start, fit that description perfectly. Other announced projects, including films from James Mangold and Donald Glover, are reportedly now in the hands of the new leadership as well, and fans are watching closely to see which survive.
“Ice Ages Do Come to an End”
Should fans give up entirely? Waititi’s parting line was deliberately ambiguous, and if you have followed his career, you know he delights in leaving doors ajar. Nothing in Hollywood is ever truly dead. Scripts get revived, directors circle back, and a “different thing together” with McNamara could itself evolve into something the franchise wants later.
But let us be realistic. Six years of development produced one delivered screenplay and no greenlight. The director has four other films competing for his time. The studio has new bosses making new plans. When a filmmaker says a project is “very iced,” the honest translation is that it is not happening on any timeline worth planning around.
For now, the Star Wars movie that was supposed to bring the fun back to the franchise is sitting in the freezer next to a dozen other could-have-beens. And Taika Waititi, never one to linger, has already moved on to the next four things. That is show business. The fans will survive. They always do, mostly by rewatching the originals and arguing about the prequels, which, for what it is worth, is exactly the kind of fun Waititi was trying to bottle.
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