Fans of The Last Jedi who are eagerly anticipating its director to return to the galaxy far far away will have to sit back and hang tight. Prior to the release of The Last Jedi, Disney/Lucasfilm had announced that Rian Johnson is set to make a brand new Star Wars trilogy. The film’s polarizing response by fans, though, led many to wonder if the trilogy was still in the works. A few months ago, Johnson confirmed that despite fan backlash, his Star Wars trilogy is still in development and he’ll start to focus on it after the release of his upcoming whodunit, Knives Out.
However, in a recent interview with the Evening Standard, Rian Johnson admitted that he’s frankly so uncertain when Lucasfilm intends to get production rolling, to the extent that he’s already thinking of making another original feature film in between Knives Out and his next Star Wars venture. When asked for Star Wars updates, Johnson simply said:
“The truth is they’re still figuring out their schedule, their game plan. If it’s possible for me to squeeze in another film before or while working on that, I will.”
I’m sure that this news will once again cause the internet to speculate if Johnson’s Star Wars films will ever come to fruition. As someone who loves The Last Jedi beyond reason and Johnson’s other films — Brick, Looper — as well, I’m keeping my fingers tightly crossed.
Previously, Johnson said that he’s trying to figure out what the “essence” of Star Wars means to him.
“I think that the fun and challenging part of it is to dive in, figure out what’s exciting and then figure out what it’s going to be. We’re doing something that steps beyond the legacy characters. What does that look like? To me, the blue sky element of it is what was most striking about it. I know the way that I’m coming at it and what’s fun about it for everyone in George Lucas’ films is figuring out, ‘what’s the next step?’ It really makes you think and figure out what the essence of Star Wars is for me and what that will look like moving forward.”
