This past January, I posted about my sources telling me that Disney’s Daisy Ridley starring Rey movie, potentially titled “New Jedi Order,” and directed by Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, had been delayed indefinitely by the mouse house. Now, I never said that it was never going to happen, I just implied that a pause button had been pushed by Disney CEO Bob Iger, and we wouldn’t be seeing much development on this film in the near future.
Well, EmpireCity, who have been right with their intel, numerous times, are backing me up here, but they’re also going one step further by claiming that the film has actually been totally scrapped by Disney and that Ridley has yet to be told about the decision.
I keep hearing that one of the projects that Bob Iger and @Disney mentioned this week that they have quietly killed off but haven't made public is in fact the REY @starwars movie. They haven't even told Daisy Ridley.
If you remember, just last week, Iger confessed, in an investors call, that he had “privately killed a few projects”, none of which have been made public yet.
The many issues with this project, initially, seemed to reside in creative differences between screenwriter Steven Knight and LucasFilm. I’m told that a draft had originally been written for the movie, but LucasFilm gave Knight so many notes that he had to start from scratch.
To make matters worse, there is the possibility that Knight might not be staying on-board the project. His frustrations have grown, so he’s put Star Wars on the backburner and is now focused on the screenplay for his “Peaky Blinders” movie, which is supposed to go into production in the fall.
These issues with Knight come only two years after development on the film started, and various drafts had circulated, with different writers, including Damon Lindelof (“Watchmen”) and Justin Brit-Gibson, both eventually exiting this untitled Rey Skywalker project. Knight came aboard soon after.
Now, I also wouldn’t be surprised, and EmpireCity is hinting at this, if part of the decision to, supposedly, scrap the Rey movie has to do with comments from Obaid-Chinoy, all of which went viral, including one where she proudly exclaimed that her goal was to “make men uncomfortable” and another where she stated, “it’s about time that a woman” shaped a Star Wars movie — completely unaware of Princess Leia?
Obaid-Chinoy’s background is in feminist non-fiction filmmaking, so it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that she said this. If it’s a passion of hers, then so be it, make as many men uncomfortable as you want, but Star Wars fans are primarily male and they will likely be turned off from buying a ticket for Obaid-Chinoy’s upcoming film.
Criterion's December lineup has some great additions to the library, but the title that jumped out at me is Werner Herzog's "Grizzly Man," which officially joins the Collection on December 8.