Steven Knight exits Disney’s planned Rey Star Wars movie

Last year, it was reported that Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight was tapped to pen the screenplay for the untitled Rey-centric Star Wars movie with Ms. Marvel‘s Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy attached to direct. The new cinematic Star Wars installment is the same one that Damon Lindelof and Justin Britt-Gibson originally penned before they departed. Knight is best known for creating Peaky Blinders, the period crime drama starring Cillian Murphy, but he is also known for his work on Eastern Promises, Dirty Pretty Things, Locke, Allied, Spencer, Taboo, See, SAS: Rogue Heroes, and more. It’s said that this new Star Wars movie will mark the franchise’s return to the big screen following the release of The Rise of Skywalker in 2019.

Variety is now reporting that Steven Knight has also left the proposed Star Wars project for undisclosed reasons. This comes long after production was expected to kick off earlier this year and this delay now pushes the project start date back to 2025 at the earliest. This development continues to plague Lucasfilm Star Wars film attempts, whereas their television output has been more plentiful. Kathleen Kennedy has seen difficulty trying to get this movie pushing forward along with a Rogue Squadron movie that director Patti Jenkins had exited after creative differences.

Back when he left, Lindelof would be very cryptic about his strained involvement with the Star Wars brand. “I will just say, that for reasons that I can’t get into on this Sunday morning, on this day, the degree of difficulty is extremely, extremely, extremely high.” He continues, “If it can’t be great, it shouldn’t exist. That’s all I’ll say, because I have the same association with it as you do, which is, it’s the first movie I saw sitting in my dad’s lap, four years old, May of ’77. I think it’s possible that sometimes when you hold something in such high reverence and esteem, you start to get in the kitchen and you just go, ‘Maybe I shouldn’t be cooking. Maybe I should just be eating.’ We’ll just leave it at that.”

Other projects that were once on deck for Star Wars included a new Rian Johnson trilogy, a Taika Waititi film, as well as a Shawn Levy film that he supposedly will get to now that Deadpool & Wolverine and Stranger Things have been checked off his schedule.