Draft:Untitled Taika Waititi Star Wars film

An upcoming American space opera film is being directed by Taika Waititi from a screenplay he wrote with Krysty Wilson-Cairns. Produced by Lucasfilm and set to be distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, the film will be part of the Star Wars franchise.

Lucasfilm approached Waititi about making a new Star Wars film by January 2020, and confirmed his hiring alongside Wilson-Cairns that May. Waititi worked on the screenplay over the following years as the project was delayed by his other commitments and the 2023 Writers Guild of America strike.

Development
By mid-January 2020, Taika Waititi had been approached by Lucasfilm to develop a new Star Wars film. This came as the company was set to take a break from Star Wars feature films following the release of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019) due to the mixed reactions to recent films in the franchise. It also came after Waititi received acclaim for directing the first-season finale of the franchise's Disney+ television series The Mandalorian. When asked about this a month later, Waititi denied being approached about making a Star Wars film but said he would be interested making one "if it was right" and if he did not think it would be career suicide. On May 4, 2020, which is Star Wars Day, Lucasfilm announced that Waititi would direct a new Star Wars film and that he was writing the screenplay with Krysty Wilson-Cairns. That July, Waititi revealed that he had started writing the script during the COVID-19 pandemic. Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy discussed the film during the Walt Disney Company's Investor Day event on December 10, saying it would be "fresh, unexpected, and... unique".

Waititi said in June 2021 that he hoped the film would be his next project after he completed Thor: Love and Thunder in February 2022, but he acknowledged that he was also attached to write, direct, and star in numerous film and television projects at that point. In May 2022, it was expected to be the next Star Wars film ahead of the previously announced Rogue Squadron. Kennedy said they were aiming for a late 2023 release date for Waititi's film, though it had not been officially scheduled for release. The next month, Waititi said filming would not begin until after 2022 because he was still working out the story and had other commitments. He would continue writing the script during the second half of 2022 while he was filming the second season of Our Flag Means Death and the pilot episode of Time Bandits in New Zealand. After Kennedy expressed interest in creating a "whole new saga" beyond the main "Skywalker Saga" films, Waititi said he wanted to expand Star Wars to new characters and stories rather than make a spin-off film based on existing characters. While promoting Love and Thunder in July, Waititi said he asked Natalie Portman—who portrayed Jane Foster / Mighty Thor in Love and Thunder—if she was interested in joining his film, forgetting that she starred in the Star Wars prequel trilogy as Padmé Amidala. He also joked that he would "ruin" the franchise in a similar way to how he brought his own style to the Thor franchise, and later added that the film would "piss people off" if they did not want it to be like his other films.

In March 2023, Variety reported on the state of the in-development Star Wars films. Though some were no longer expected to happen, Waititi was believed to still be working on his film and was likely to also star in a role of similar prominence to his portrayal of Adolf Hitler in the film Jojo Rabbit (2019). The next month, Kennedy confirmed that Lucasfilm still planned to make Waititi's film and said the studio was giving him the space to work on the script himself. After considering several options for his next film after Love and Thunder, Waititi settled on directing Klara and the Sun at the start of May. He felt that he had a "really good idea" for the Star Wars film and was reportedly committed to filming it in 2024, but he still had work to do on the script and this was put on hold by the 2023 Writers Guild of America strike which began that month. Waititi had turned in several drafts of the script by then, and he owed Lucasfilm a new draft after the strike ended in September. In November, Waititi said he did not want to rush the film and Lucasfilm was willing to delay it until he was happy with the script, which he was working on at the same time as several other projects. He wanted to capture the feeling of watching the early Star Wars films The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Return of the Jedi (1983). In the same month, Dave Filoni revealed that he was now chief creative officer at Lucasfilm, after serving as executive producer on various Star Wars television series, and would be directly involved in the planning of future films and series.