Marvel’s Thor: Love and Thunder director Taika Waititi has said his under-wraps Star Wars script is designed to recapture the sense of fun found in the sci-fi saga’s original trilogy.
Waititi’s on-again, off-again work on a Star Wars movie has been ongoing since at least 2020 and at times has felt unlikely to ever release due to the director’s busy schedule and after a divisive reception to his most recent Marvel project.
Still, Waititi’s take on a galaxy far, far away was recently mentioned again by outgoing Lucasfilm boss Kathleen Kennedy, who described it as “somewhat alive” — which was a more promising update than several other Star Wars movie projects that Kennedy had worked on which she simply didn’t mention at all.
Now, Waititi has been asked to give a hint at what his script will entail. And, perhaps unsurprisingly, the filmmaker behind comedy-infused films such as What We Do in the Shadows and Thor: Ragnarok said he wanted to bring out the “fun” of Star Wars, too.
“I think you’ve seen it before but I’m just trying to sort of go back and harness a little bit more of the fun from the original films,” Waititi told Variety, “which is what I remember.
“The stakes were very high,” he continued, reminiscing of his take on George Lucas’ original trilogy, “there were serious things going on but also there was a lot fun to be had in those films. That’s what I was trying to bring back.”
Back in 2023, Waititi blamed the long wait for his Star Wars movie to materialize on his current workload, and that he didn’t expect to make the project until he’d completed “four other scripts” he was involved with. The director used the same reasoning to explain why he wouldn’t direct another Thor project for Marvel, as he was already planning to be busy for another six or seven years.
Amid a pile of in-progress and now-scrapped Star Wars pitches within Lucasfilm this decade, only two Star Wars films have been definitively confirmed to release. The Mandalorian and Grogu launches in theaters on May 22. After that, the Ryan Gosling-starring Star Wars: Starfighter arrives on May 28, 2027.
Image credit: Anna Pocaro/Variety via Getty Images.
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at [email protected] or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
