We know that after a long hiatus, Star Wars will return to the big screen in 2026 as the upcoming The Mandalorian & Grogu movie has done the thing that no other Star Wars project announced since the end of the sequel trilogy has actually been able to do, roll cameras. However, the odds still seem strong that the announced movie featuring Daisy Ridley’s return as Rey will end up happening, even if the film continues to churn through screenwriters.
When the new project, to be directed by Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, was first announced, Damon Lindelof and Justin Britt-Gibson were set to write the script. In March 2023, the pair left the project but were quickly replaced by Peaky Blinders writer Steven Knight. Knight himself left the film last October, but in a conversation with The Telegraph, he spoke about the “system” he was working within, and he was but a small part of, explaining:
There’s a system, and when you engage with it, you know what it is. You do your bit, you turn in your draft or drafts, as I did, and then the system moves on. I fully expect that substantial amounts of what I did will be in the movie – who knows? But that’s the expectation.
According to The Telegraph, the conversation with Knight happened before his departure from the upcoming Star Wars movie, but he certainly sounds like he knew he was done, talking about his script in the past tense, as if he was done, but he knew the project was not.
Now, George Nolfi is the scribe currently attached to the film. He’s promising a project with strong connections to George Lucas’ original trilogy.
Whatever the circumstances, it seems there are no hard feelings between Knight and Lucasfilm. The writer clearly understood what part he was expected to play, and he played it. Whether or not the final draft of the script contains a significant amount of his work or not is likely something we won’t know until the movie comes out. He certainly hopes and expects that much of his work will survive, but he can’t be sure.
While bringing in multiple writers to continually fine-tune a script is fairly standard practice, there comes a point when it becomes clear that a movie is having trouble. We’ve seen multiple announced Star Wars movies get canceled and in most cases it appears that the “system” that Knight refers to simply wasn’t able to produce a project that made everybody happy.
It’s far from clear when we might see this new Star Wars movie, but the list of upcoming Disney movies includes a pair of untitled Star Wars projects, and the next open slot is in December 2026, with this film being, as far as we know, the furthest along of the in-development Star Wars projects. The movie is likely eyeing that date, though it will certainly all depend on when the system produces a script that everybody is happy with.
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