Rian Johnson Trilogy Not Dead, Director Would Be Heartbroken if Done With ‘Star Wars’
On November 10, it will be the 5-year anniversary of the official announcement that Star Wars: The Last Jedi writer/director Rian Johnson would be creating a new film trilogy set in a galaxy far, far away. As a point of reference, that was also the day that Bob Iger announced a Star Wars live-action series for Disney Plus, which is what we now know as The Mandalorian. While that show has now completed production on its third season, and is filming its second spin-off show, there has been almost nothing but silence about Johnson’s announced trilogy. The filmmaker has now given some form of an update.
Shortly after it was reported that Damon Lindelof has been regularly visiting the Disney lot for lunch, supposedly to discuss his Star Wars film, Empire Magazine published a new interview with Rian Johnson where he confirms he’s been regularly talking to Kathleen Kennedy since The Last Jedi came out. He said:
“I’ve stayed close to Kathleen [Kennedy] and we get together often and talk about it. It’s just at this point a matter of schedule and when it can happen. It would break my heart if I were finished, if I couldn’t get back in that sandbox at some point.”
Since The Last Jedi came out, Johnson has become one of the most successful writer-directors in Hollywood. During the summer of 2018, he wrote the script for a murder mystery that was inspired both by his love of Agatha Christie’s novels and apparently the backlash he received from The Last Jedi. He, and his producing partner Ram Bergman, quickly signed Daniel Craig to star after Bond 25 saw some production troubles, and brought the package to the Toronto International Film Festival. That was Knives Out, which scored the biggest deal of that edition of the festival when the production rights were acquired for over $40 million, as well as strong back-end deals for Craig and the filmmakers. The movie, which at the time saw A-listers all over Hollywood would line up to star in, would go on to out-gross (in the U.S.) a Quentin Tarantino movie starring Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Margot Robbie, would earn Johnson his first writing Oscar nomination, and set up two sequels that Netflix acquired early last year for over $400 million, including a payday of $100 million to Johnson, Bergman, and Craig.
The first of those Knives Out sequels will be out later this year, and the second one will probably begin shooting in 2023. If Johnson were to come back to the Star Wars galaxy, it will not be at least until the end of 2024.
Miguel Fernández is a Spanish student that has movies as his second passion in life. His favorite movie of all time is The Lord of the Rings, but he is also a huge Star Wars fan. However, fantasy movies are not his only cup of tea, as movies from Scorsese, Fincher, Kubrick or Hitchcock have been an obsession for him since he started to understand the language of filmmaking. He is that guy who will watch a black and white movie, just because it is in black and white.
