Back in 2021, Disney revealed plans for The Return of the Rocketeer, a follow-up to the popular 1991 film The Rocketeer directed by Joe Johnston about an ordinary guy who finds an experimental jetpack created by Howard Hughes. David Oyelowo was attached to produce and star, with JD Dillard (Devotion) originally on board as director. But Dillard dropped out, and Eugene Ashe’s screenplay was being worked on as recently as 2023.
However, Oyelowo now tells the LA Times that The Return of the Rocketeer has been canceled by Disney. Not only that, but the same has happened with an adaptation of Onyeka and the Academy of the Sun that he was working on for Netflix.
Oyelowo claims, and probably correctly, that as studios scale back their DEI initiatives, certain projects are falling by the wayside…
“Onyeka was exactly the kind of story we wanted to tell. After George Floyd’s murder, there was a wave of support for projects highlighting underrepresented voices. But now, it’s become clear that much of that support was superficial. Films like Onyeka and The Return of the Rocketeer are now harder to get made.”
The central figure in The Return of the Rocketeer is certainly someone that Trump would claim was a DEI hire. Oyelowo would’ve starred as an African-American pilot who inherited the Rocketeer identity.
Unfortunately, if the political winds were different, this would likely already be out there in the world.
