Taika Waititi Now Focused On Star Wars

With filming completed on Thor IV, the auteur is ready to focus on a galaxy far, far away….

Today’s note comes from Wired, where Stephen Kelly jotted down a whole lot of notes from a Zoom conversation with Free Guy star, Thor director, and all-around entertainer Taika Waititi.

What do the kids say? It’s been a minute since Kathleen Kennedy announced that Lucasfilm would collaborate with Waititi as the franchise moves beyond its Skywalking roots.

And Waititi, who has been everywhere doing everything (including directing episodes of The Mandalorian and voicing murder droid turned nanny IG-11), is ready to focus on his “Star Wars” film.

We’ve Got a Story

Kelly wrote:

Having finished filming on Thor: Love and Thunder, Waititi is now focusing more on his Star Wars film. “It’s still in the ‘EXT. SPACE’ stage,” he laughs, referring to the format scriptwriters use to set up a scene. “But we’ve got a story. I’m really excited by it because it feels very me.”

But “very me” means, well, mind-blowing. Thor: Ragnarok featured a talking pile of rocks (lovingly played by Waititi). And the same heart that Korg featured was apparent in IG-11.

Kelly asked Taika: Has it been a challenge to marry his irreverent tone with the operatically sincere Star Wars universe?

“I tend to go down that little sincerity alleyway in my films,” Waititi told Wired.com. “I like to fool the viewer into thinking ‘ha it’s this’ and then them going, ‘Damn it, you made me feel something!’”

Chaos Coming?

This is really great news for fans of Star Wars, worried that the upcoming films may have trouble living up to the Skywalker Saga.

And while the filmmaker is ready to focus on Star Wars, that’s not the only thing on his mind.

“It’s my comfort zone to have a lot of things [going] on,” explained Waititi to Kelly. “That chaos is where my best work comes from.”

Sounds about right.

You’ll see Waititi in “Free Guy: when it hits theaters later this week.