Michael Waldron, one of the screenwriters behind Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, confirmed that he is currently working on the script for a new Star Wars movie.
Doctor Strange 2 is currently making waves at the box office, adding another layer of multiversal madness to the MCU. While Waldron would have made a reasonable choice to spearhead Loki season 2 after his success with the first chapter, it appears his ties to Star Wars made that impossible.
Waldron was recently featured on Deadline's Hero Nation Podcast, where he discussed Star Wars, Doctor Strange 2, and the next season of the Marvel Disney Plus series Loki. "Eric Martin has taken over as head writer for season two," said Waldron. "Eric was my second-in-command through season one; he’s a brilliant writer and a close friend of mine." Waldron also confirmed that the reason for this was because he's "busy off writing this Star Wars movie." In the interview, Waldron also explains why Kang the Conquer (Jonathan Majors) wasn't in Doctor Strange 2.
After his appearance at the end of season 1 of Loki, many fans expected the character to appear in the new Doctor Strange sequel since he's so heavily tied to the multiverse. However, according to Waldron, they were afraid that would make the movie too overstuffed and that he and director Sam Raimi wanted to focus more on Elizabeth Olsen's Wanda. “To me, it felt like we had the biggest best bullet in Wanda,” said Waldron. “When working with Sam, I said we should really make the decision to make Wanda the antagonist in this film. We can’t let another movie have that fun.”
Waldron doesn't say much about the mysterious Star Wars project he's working on, but he is confirmed to be writing the script for the Star Wars film that Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige is producing. While Feige has had insurmountable success helping to shape the MCU, this will be his first project in the Galaxy far, far away. Disney and Lucasfilm have not produced a Star Wars film since 2019's The Rise Of Skywalker. While several new Star Wars films have been announced, many of them have been scrapped or postponed indefinitely. This includes Wonder Woman 84 director Patty Jenkins' X-Wing fighter film, Rogue Squadron, and Knives Out director Rian Johnson's planned trilogy.
Instead, Lucasfilm and Disney have been hard at work producing TV shows on Disney Plus. Lucasfilm has found a lot of recent success on the small screen starting with The Mandalorian, which has now spun off into several different Disney Plus original series, including The Book of Boba Fett and the upcoming Ahsoka series. There's also the highly anticipated Obi-Wan Kenobi series, which premieres May 27th on Disney Plus and features the return of actor Ewan McGregor as the Jedi master.
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is now playing in theatres.
Source: Deadline