Making a trilogy of movies about one main story with three directors all allowed to develop their own ideas and plotlines sounds rather unwise, surely?
How about greenlighting another huge big budget trilogy with no story outline or characters at all?
No wonder Disney appears to be suddenly pulling back on plans made by Rian Johnson and Kathleen Kennedy, especially following the explosive fan reaction to The Last Jedi.
New comments from long-term Star Wars art director Neil Lamont appear to confirm that work on Johnson’s divisive trilogy about “new galaxies” has been stopped, as well as the imperilled Obi-Wan Kenobi spin-off.
Back in December Johnson told Slash Film: “We just had just a really good experience (making The Last Jedi)… It was like last week of senior year. We were cleaning out our lockers. And all getting kind of sad. And saying, how do we keep working together? And that I threw out, I said, the most interesting thing to me would be a new trilogy, one story told over three movies. Go new places, meet new folks, come up with a new story to tell in the Star Wars universe. The sky’s the limit. That sounds thrilling. And they really responded to that. So we’re off, yeah.
And Disney gave it a go ahead with no specific story idea?: “Yeah, that was it. That was the pitch.”
Of course, one month later, everything had changed. And now it seems it may never happen.
After The Last Jedi was released it unleashed a staggering and unexpected backlash with a vocal part of the fandom furious over numerous issues including the teatment of Luke, dismissal of Snoke and fudging of Rey’s parentage.
And then, crucially, Kennedy’s problems with the original Solo: A Star Wars Story came home to roost when the movie hit cinemas.
The original directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller were sensationally fired after their vision and working practices were deemed too experimental and left-field. Tthe next twelve months increased the nightmare as rumours spread of spiralling costs and decreasing faith in the project across the industry and, even worse, among fans.
The Last Jedi backlash and boycott certainly also contributed to a final box office haul of $392million is particularly disastrous when every other modern era Star Wars release has crossed $1billion and the costs of reshoots meant the movie was estimated to need a $500million gross just to break even.
While all this was unfolding, Rogue One art director Neil Lamont, had been involved with preparing the expected next series of movies, including the Obi-Wan spin-off.
Lamont told Cinemablend this week that work on the next generation Lucasfilm projects had begun before Disney suddenly called amajor halt.
He said: “We were just starting our work on another Star Wars spinoff and yeah. We were actually just making our mark on Tatooine, which would have been interesting, and some other new galaxies.”
The only reported projects that involve any other galaxies are the Johnson movies.
Lamont appears to have confirmed two different major Star Wars rumours.
Firstly, Tattooine is Obi-Wan Kenobi’s home planet and his movie had already been reported to be based there. Speculation that this movie had hit the rocks was already widespread.
If the projects in “other galaxies” are, indeed, Johnson’s three films, this is another major blow for all the plans laid by that director and Kathleen Kennedy to take Star Wars in a diffeernt direction. A direction may fans, and now perhaps Disney, no longer wish to pursue.