Taika Waititi’s Star Wars script sure sounds like a script
It doesn't sound like Taika Waititi's Star Wars film is any closer to reality than it was a year ago
Aux News Taika Waititi
Of all the Star Wars projects that have been announced in the last few years, it seems a relatively small percentage has made it past the brainstorming stage. Now that a full slate of releases has been announced, the film side of the franchise might finally gain some momentum again. This doesn’t seem to have incentivized potential Star Wars director Taika Waititi to move any faster, but hey, at least he’s still in the mix.
“I’ve got a really good idea for it,” Waititi tells The Hollywood Reporter of the Star Wars script he’s been working on for three years now. “It’s just as with all films, it’s this middle part. You’re like, ‘What’s going to happen?’ And then you look at all of those films that are so great, you’re like, ‘Well, I guess they can’t meet some smuggler with an alien sidekick.’”
A certain degree of secrecy is involved in all of these major franchise development situations, so let’s give him the benefit of the doubt for not sharing any more details. Even so, it doesn’t sound like he’s much further along in the process than he was a year ago. “I’m trying to write the Star Wars idea at the moment,” the filmmaker told the New York Times in June 2022. “I’ve got to see how that goes, because once I submit it, that might determine when it gets made or if it gets made, even.”
One can extrapolate from his most recent comment that he still hasn’t submitted anything, although that hasn’t hurt his chances: “We’re going to make that one day,” Star Wars big boss Kathleen Kennedy declared in April of this year. When that day will come is anyone’s guess. In fairness to Waititi, he’s a busy man. Between executive producing several television projects, writing and directing Apple TV+’s Time Bandits, adapting Klara And The Sun (as is rumored), and promoting his latest feature Next Goal Wins, he probably doesn’t have a ton of time to be tinkering with his Star Wars script.
And that doesn’t even account for his latest ambition, which is following his wife Rita Ora around, as he explains to THR. “Just be her little tour toy boy and hang out with her and just watch her perform and get her a cup of tea backstage.” Star Wars, you’ll have to wait!
77 Comments
Is this guy’s 15 minutes up yet?
He’s still needs to host SnL and do a psa for the incredible edible egg, then his husk can be cast away and his bodily fluids used to fuel someone’s comeback.
Noted.
Can you call it 15 minutes when he first put out a well-received property in 2014 and last did in 2022? He’s a talented director, even if you’re sick of hearing about him.
I actually like Love and Thunder just fine, but unless you’re talking about Reservation Dogs, I don’t think 2022 was the year of his last well-received property.
Reservation Dogs was a nice surprise.
“I actually like Love and Thunder just fine, but unless you’re talking about Reservation Dogs”
Why would Reservation Dogs not count?
I was thinking RD and Our Flag Means Death. Maybe he wasn’t as much at the helm of those, but that’s what was on my mind.
2014?
I’d go back to 2007’s Eagle vs Shark and 2010’s Boy. His work has always been well received. If anything Thor: Love and Thunder was a blip, and not a unanimous one.
Fair, I was talking properties that were culturally well-known, but yeah, his work has always been critically well-regarded.
I kind of feel like people all decided to turn on him because they leaned into his worst impulses for the last Thor movie and went too far with it. It doesn’t make his earlier better films crap, too.
Doesn’t it? I think Love and Thunder diminishes Ragnarok quite significantly. It’s the type of bad sequel that makes me reflect on the director’s earlier traits.
“Doesn’t it? I think Love and Thunder diminishes Ragnarok quite significantly.”
That’s because you’re a moron.
I think we just got a little too much of him too quickly – the Lin Manuel Miranda effect – but I still have soft spot for his work. I’m assuming it was killed off during one of Zaslav’s various pillages, but he was great as Blackbeard in ‘Our Flag Means Death’ and I’d love to see him in a second season.
Kiwi JJ Abrams.
Kiwi JJ Abrams? WTF? Waititi has his flaws, but none of them line up with Abrams’.
I see no reason to change my opinion. Abrams started out well too, and then they gave him everything and look how that played out.
Well, sure, if by that equivalence you only meant they both had a promising start…but by that measure there are hundreds of filmmakers past and present who fit the bill and when I see a reference specifically to Abrams I take it to mean some combination of (1) narrative closure incompetence, (2) insistence on imposing the wrong template on every franchise he touches, and (3) a fetish for lens flares. And, yes, Waititi has made dull material but even then it’s not similar to Abrams’ dull material. And his best work is quite simply beyond Abrams’ grasp. Abrams could never have made *Hunt for the Wilderpeople* or *Thor: Ragnarok* or *What We Do in the Shadows* or *Our Flag Means Death*. (Can’t be sure about *Reservation Dogs* and *Jojo Rabbit* as I haven’t seen them.)That’s all I meant. I’m not going to stan for the maker of *Thor: Love and Thunder* or the unfathomably well-reviewed *Wellington Paranormal* (loved the concept but could only tolerate 5 eps; I suspect this is a micro-budget recycling plant for ideas that didn’t work in *WWDITS*).
Season 2 of OFMD finished filming back in December, and it hasn’t been listed as being killed, so I think we can at this point assume it’s still happening.
Anyone hating on either Taika Waititi or Lin Manuel Miranda is either jealous, talent-less, or both.
Waititi is that your alt
I’m not jealous but I am talentless.
I don’t dislike Lin Manuel Miranda for oversaturation. I dislike him for one very specific reason.
Fuck off.
tough to say, he even matrix-dodged armie hammer being in his latest movie.
If he’s not your style, you can just ignore him. “Our Flag Means Death” and “What We Do In The Shadows” are both fantastic shows that are still going on, and he’s got some really good movies in his filmography.
My flag means fun. And boobs. My flag means fun and boobs.
I think he’s well past 15 mins, dude.
He’s better than most.
In conclusion, Jemaine Clement should get more attention.
Noted.
of lame?
Waititi aged 40 years since Ragnarok
He’s James Gunning himself. All the hip directors are doing it
Since marrying Rita Ora.
“RITA, YOU CAN’T BREAK QUARANTINE LAWS, EVEN UF UT US YOUR BIRTHDAY! JUST POP ON SOME JANDALS AND FULL THE CHULLY BUN WITH TUI AND CHULL IN THE BACKYARD.”
I don’t ask for much, but I’d really like it if this guy’s Star War never gets made.
I don’t ask for much, but I’d really like it if you got colo-rectal cancer.
Why not? I hear it’ll feature original songs from Lin-Manuel Miranda and star Awkwafina and Amy Schumer!
The gender-flipped meet-cute of Bib Fortuna and Jabba the Hutt?
Jabette’s got back! Also, maybe a slime trail (are Hutts slugs?)
…Sure, why not? If Hoojibs are canon, anything goes.
Due to a clerical error resulting in Taika Waititi directing this movie, the part of Princess Leia will be played by a loud, fat Maori kid- no, not that one. He aged out of marketability.
I’m a fan of his but even I know a movie is not needed. Give him one episode of one of the Star Wars shows (make one an Anthology already!) and let him get his impulse out without any connected characters and everybody wins.
I, for one, hope you don’t get what you ask for.
“I don’t ask for much, but I’d really like it if this guy’s Star War never gets made.”
Imagine being so fucking pathetic.
What does a script sound like?
A long, slow, three day fart getting sniffed up by a goblin.
If a script goes unproduced, does it make a noise?
Only on the AV Club.
-Click to continue reading-
well to be fair there is a writer’s strike. he can’t really work on it at the moment.
Writers are definitely working on stuff, like privately and in their homes. They just can’t do anything in an actual writer’s room, take development meetings for screenplays without looking like scabs.I’m very positive that once the strike is settled, there will be a few thousand scripts ready to hit the ground.
Exactly. The strike is against the members of the AMPTP who are refusing a reasonable deal; if an independent producer wanted to make an independent film with independent financing, and was willing to meet the WGA’s terms, then everything could proceed as normal for that production.
“I’m not lazy or unproductive. I’m merely showing solidarity with the WGA!”
Has anyone suggested this to GRRRM?
Is that the noise the Hulk make when he’s trying to pass a particularly nuggety shit?
My plan was to slowly extend with each comment to GRRRRRRRRRRM, but your take works too.
“OK, George, one of the biggest criticisms of fantasy is that everyone just tries to ape Tolkien.”“I want both initials for my middle names to be on the cover!”“Er, so that’d be-”“GEORGE R.R. MARTIN! TEEHEE!”“God damm-”“I chose Richard to go with Raymond when I was thirteen!”“Look, George, I’m gonna flip my glasses up on my head now and pinch the bridge of my nose while wincing, but please just pretend it’s for something completely unrelated to this.”
——I just realised I left the “s” off “makes”, but it works in the context of Hulk.“HULK MAKE NOT STOOL BUT FULL DINING SET! HULK SMASH TOILET! HULK READ DR. BRONNER BOTTLE TWICE! HULK SUGGEST YOU GIVE IT NOT FIVE MINUTE – FULL HALF HOUR! PUNY FREESIA CANDLE DO NOTHING!”
He’s got a pretty lengthy body of work. Dunno how that’s lazy and unproductive in a town where ten years can suddenly pass without a major project. Hell, I blinked once and five years went by.
“I’m not lazy or unproductive.”
Yeah, he’s definitively lazy and unproductive. That’s absolutely something you can accuse him of being.
If it was just Jojo Rabbit but with the emperor instead of Hitler, I’d watch. And I disliked Jojo Rabbit!
If they can bring back Ian McDiarmid, sure.
They’re bringing back Dermot Mulroney.
First time I’ve seen this guy not mugging for the picture while sporting a trying-too-hard haircut. I like it. I can’t imagine being in my fifties, looking in the mirror and spiking my hair up with gel like it’s 1997, I’m a fourteen year old with a hot date at the roller rink and about to douse myself with whatever was popular before AXE Body Spray burned out our olfactory nerves. I’m looking at you James Gunn.
They’re Taika Waititi and James Gunn.
They can pose for the cameras however the fuck they want.
Since you’re presumably not either of the two are you also trying to vainly prolong your fading youth, stepping up to defend the honor of two strangers who view you as a revenue source or both? If there are other possibilities I’m all ears because I can’t think of any.
If you can’t even consider the possibility that you’re not the chief arbiter of taste and fashion in the contemporary world, then I can’t help you.
Yet at no point did I say I was. Since you’re now exaggerating what I said in order to justify your outrage I can only assume I’ve touched a nerve and this has become personal for you. I’ll leave you alone to enjoy your time in the mirror. Those strands of gray won’t fret over themselves.
Yeah, you literally wrote you couldn’t think of any other possibilities. No need to try and explain it to me, evidently you’re the one who can’t keep up with your own conversation.
And I assume you think I’m “outraged” because of the use of the word “fuck”… What a pathetic way to exaggerate. Enjoy the pity everyone here feels for you.
“Yet at no point did I say I was.”
Just fuck off and drink bleach, please?
Are they trying too hard or are you not trying hard enough?
He’s not in his 50s, he’s just been in editing rooms for a few decades.
I see you’re channeling Dennis Miller. In that you’re doing a reference-heavy rant that comes across bitter and unfunny.
This sounds like literally the opposite of a script
The trouble is finding a way to fit in Gun N Roses organically.
Gungans N Rodians
Amyl and lots of lube helps.