Waititi joins a long list of movie-makers who were expected to bring a new direction to the franchise, before the studio appeared to get cold feet

Movie-making these days is a very expensive endeavour. In 1977, George Lucas’s Star Wars cost $11m to make, which would be approximately $60m in today’s money, and has since amassed $775m at the global box office, including rereleases. Fast forward to 2026 and the most recent film in the long-running space saga, The Mandalorian and Grogu, cost a reported $165m and brought in $346m worldwide. If there was ever a Hollywood gold rush, the mines ran dry long ago.

Perhaps this is one of the reasons why Disney-owned Lucasfilm seems to be so terrified of making new Star Wars movies. Since 2019’s The Rise of Skywalker, only one Star Wars film, the aforementioned Mando and Grogu movie, has actually made it into cinemas. But that has not stopped the studio announcing a small armada of other projects – sometimes via press release, more often at various high-profile celebrations, conferences or other corporate jamborees – that have so far failed to reach multiplexes.

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