A Secret Star Wars Movie Is In The Works
A new Star Wars film is in development with Damon Lindelof and Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy.
Lucasfilm is developing a new Star Wars film to be written by Damon Lindelof and directed by Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, according to a report from Deadline. This will mark the first Star Wars film in a number of years, as it appears that the Lucasfilm arm of the Disney company has been steadily leaning towards streaming television programs released on the Disney+ platform. At a certain point, it has seemed like every feature film Star Wars project was being quietly canceled, so this is a promising development.
This will mark the first time either Damon Lindelof or Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy have worked on a Star Wars project, though both have been involved with Disney in the past. While Lindelof has worked for a number of very large production companies, he last worked for Disney on 2015’s Tomorrowland, which he co-wrote with director Brad Bird. The science fiction film starred George Clooney, Hugh Laurie, and Britt Robertson, and ended up being a significant flop for the company, which is perhaps why Damon Lindelof hasn’t been in the Disney camp for a while.
For her part, Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy recently directed several episodes of the Disney+ series Ms. Marvel, starring Iman Vellani as Kamala Khan, a teenage Pakistani-American from New Jersey who is apparently the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s first canonically revealed mutant character. The series was widely acclaimed by critics, currently holding a 97% on Rotten Tomatoes, though it did not receive the viewership of some other Disney+ shows.
This so-far untitled Star Wars project is a major step up for Obaid-Chinoy in terms of wide visibility, though she has impressively won two Academy Awards in the category of Best Documentary Short Subject.
There are currently no released details for the Star Wars project that Damon Lindelof and Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy are involved in, which will be the first feature release under the brand since 2019’s The Rise of Skywalker. Perhaps not coincidentally, that movie was directed and co-written by J.J. Abrams, who has frequently collaborated with Damon Lindelof. The pair worked together on Star Trek into Darkness as well as the hit ABC series Lost, the latter of which first launched Damon Lindelof to the upper echelons of Hollywood screenwriting.
Damon Lindelof also created two notable series for HBO, The Leftovers and Watchmen. Both netted him some of the highest accolades of this career, though the continuation/adaptation of the latter from Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ iconic comic book miniseries also earned him an extremely hostile letter from the original author. Given that George Lucas is no longer directly involved in any Star Wars project, he probably will not have to worry about that this time around.
In recent years, Lucasfilm has had enormous success with a number of non-feature film Star Wars projects, including The Mandalorian, The Book of Boba Fett, and the ongoing Andor series. There has been recent word that Disney is not moving forward with announced Star Wars projects by Rian Johnson, Patty Jenkins, and Taika Waititi, so this might be a step forward for the franchise.
