Lucasfilm has had difficulty getting a new Star Wars movie off the ground, but perhaps Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight will have better luck. Variety has reported that Steven Knight is set to pen the screenplay for the untitled Star Wars movie with Ms. Marvel‘s Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy attached to direct. The Star Wars movie is the same one that Damon Lindelof and Justin Britt-Gibson originally penned before they departed.
Steven 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. Production is slated to kick off next February with an official announcement expected to arrive at Star Wars Celebration next month.
A week before it was revealed that Damon Lindelof and Justin Britt-Gibson had stepped down from the Star Wars project, Lindelof seemingly foretold his departure while speaking with /Film. “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,” Lindelof said. “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 point.“
Although Star Wars is thriving on Disney+ thanks to shows like The Mandalorian, Andor, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and more, the big screen side has yet to go as smoothly. Many previously announced projects have been put on the back burner, including movies from Patty Jenkins and Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige. We’ll have to keep our fingers crossed that Steven Knight is able to deliver a Star Wars script that Lucasfilm is happy with, but until I’m actually sitting in a theater watching it… I’m not about to hold my breath.