Taika Waititi to Expand "Star Wars" Beyond Pre-Existing Characters in New Movie

Ever since Star Wars returned to the big screen in 2015 with The Force Awakens, the stories told have been placed somewhere within the existing “Skywalker Saga.” Some films, like the sequel trilogy, are a direct continuation, while other projects, such as The Mandalorian introduced new characters and ideas. With Taika Waititi at the helm of a new Star Wars movie, he’s revealed that he wants to do something completely new with his film, as focused on in this report from Variety.

What’s Happening:

Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy wasn’t joking when she told Total Film magazine last month that Star Wars will need “to create a whole new saga” in order to return to the big screen and not just rely on threads from the past.
That’s exactly what Taika Waititi wants to do with his upcoming Star Wars movie, which will be the franchise’s first movie since the Skywalker saga came to a controversial end with The Rise of Skywalker.
Waititi recently told Total Film that he’s not interested in making a movie with pre-existing characters and story threads or telling origin stories. The Thor: Love and Thunder director aims to “create some new characters” and “expand the world” of Star Wars with his movie.
“Look, I think for the Star Wars universe to expand, it has to expand,” Waititi said. “I don’t think that I’m any use in the Star Wars universe making a film where everyone’s like, ‘Oh great, well that’s the blueprints to the Millennium Falcon, ah that’s Chewbacca’s grandmother.’ That all stands alone, that’s great, though I would like to take something new and create some new characters and just expand the world, otherwise it feels like it’s a very small story.”
Waititi is developing his Star Wars movie with co-writer Krysty Wilson-Cairns (1917).
While Star Wars has pivoted away from movies and embraced TV in the last couple years, most recently with the premiere of the Obi-Wan Kenobi limited series on Disney+, Kennedy stressed to Total Film that the big screen remains a priority for the franchise.
“They’ve been in movement all along,” Kennedy said of the franchise’s secretive film slate. “As we leave the saga, we have all this great, exciting work happening on the television side that informs so much about where we’re going. We want to be very intentional about that. And we have great talent that we’re working with – people who care so deeply about what the next iteration of Star Wars is and about getting people back into movie theaters, so we can really come out with a bang. That’s important to us.”