Taika Waititi Confirms His 'Star Wars' Film Is 'Very Iced'

Taika Waititi's "Star Wars" movie, in development since 2020, is officially on hold. The director confirmed the freeze himself, unprompted, during an interview with Inverse while promoting his latest film, "Klara and the Sun."

"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," Waititi said. His publicist, he added, had told him not to say more. He said it anyway. "Well, there's your answer," Waititi told the interviewer. "I don't even know how to dress it up or make it even vague."

How frozen is the project?

By Waititi's own account, very. "It's very iced," he said. "I've got about four other movies I'm trying to do."

He left one narrow opening. "Ice ages do come to an end… Who knows?" he said.

The remark closes, at least for now, a chapter that began in 2020, when Lucasfilm set Waititi to write and direct a "Star Wars" feature he had teased as distinct from the main saga. As recently as January, the director was still describing his ambitions for the film in active terms.

"I was trying to go back and harness a little bit more of the fun from the original films, which is what I remember [from] them," Waititi said at the time. "The stakes are very high, and there's serious things going on, but there's also a lot of fun to be had in those films. That's what I was trying to bring back."

What does this change for the franchise?

In practical terms, it removes one of the few named, live "Star Wars" film projects from the Lucasfilm pipeline. Kennedy, the outgoing Lucasfilm president, had said as recently as her exit that Waititi's film was "still somewhat alive." Waititi's confirmation this week replaces that cautious formulation with a flat statement of suspension.

Waititi also explained, in his January comments, why his take had to stand apart. "For me to do something there, it would need to be a little different and a little bit more its own thing," he said, citing the number of projects already crowded into the franchise's space.

A difficult week for the director

The news arrived as Waititi promotes "Klara and the Sun," an adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro's novel starring Jenna Ortega. The film has drawn a mixed response from critics and fans.

Variety's Guy Lodge wrote in his review: "Jenna Ortega tries hard to illuminate this misbegotten Kazuo Ishiguro adaptation, but Waititi's decision to play it for strained, whimsical comedy is ruinous."

What happens next depends on those four other films Waititi says he is trying to make, and on whether the ice age he invoked does, in fact, come to an end.