AVENGERS: ENDGAME Directors Considered Helming Kevin Feige's STAR WARS Movie (Which Really Was Happening)

AVENGERS: ENDGAME Directors Considered Helming Kevin Feige's STAR WARS Movie (Which Really Was Happening)

Despite claims from Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy that Kevin Feige's Star Wars movie was never in the works, Avengers: Endgame directors Joe and Anthony Russo have confirmed they considered directing it.

News
By JoshWilding - May 04, 2023 02:05 PM EST
Filed Under: Star Wars
Source: SFFGazette.com

After The Rise of Skywalker ended the Skywalker Saga on a bum note, Lucasfilm found itself struggling to get any Star Wars movie off the ground. Word soon started trickling out regarding a number of projects the studio had in the works, though none of them have since come to fruition. 

Among them was a movie from Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige, with the veteran producer turning to Loki and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness writer Michael Waldron to pen the screenplay. There was a lot of excitement among fans, but we've recently heard rumblings it's been sidelined as Feige focuses on the MCU and Waldron on Avengers: Secret Wars.

Talking at Star Wars Celebration, Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy was asked about the movie and claimed, "Nothing ever got developed...we never discussed an idea."

Insiders were quick to counter that by pointing to comments from Waldron and even the official Star Wars website. 

Ultimately, it sounds like Kennedy wasn't entirely on board with the Marvel Studios boss being given his own Star Wars movie and may have even seen him as a threat (remember, rumours have persisted for years that he could replace her as Lucasfilm President).

Further confirming the project was moving forward are some comments from Avengers: Endgame directors Joe and Anthony Russo on the Smartless podcast (via SFFGazette.com). 

"We love Star Wars," Joe said. "There were early conversations, there were some early conversations with us. Kevin Feige is a huge Star Wars fan, and there were some early conversations about maybe teaming up with Kevin to do Star Wars."

That would have been a perfect way to bring them into this Galaxy Far, Far Away and we see now who Feige wanted to bring this mystery movie to life in theaters. Why Kennedy would turn down the opportunity to bring the Russo Brothers into the Star Wars franchise is hard to say, and we doubt it will ever happen now. 

Are you disappointed Feige won't be heading into a Galaxy Far, Far Away?

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MCUKnight11
MCUKnight11 - 5/4/2023, 2:06 PM
What is going on at Lucasfilm to make Feige not do a movie about the one thing he loves more than Marvel...
ObserverIO
ObserverIO - 5/4/2023, 2:16 PM
@MCUKnight11 - Happy Star Wars Day.

This is the ultimate no-brainer. Together with the Russos, the MCU directors that gave us 4 of the best MCU movies, the last of which became the biggest movie ever?

This should have been the one.
mastakilla39
mastakilla39 - 5/4/2023, 2:59 PM
@MCUKnight11 - Once KK annouces her retirement, all the projects will be on the table again. But once a new studio head is appointed there's a huge chance all the projects including the ones just announced can still get cancelled too. Rule is to never expect anything good from Lucas Arts until you get a trailer.
pitbull76
pitbull76 - 5/4/2023, 8:58 PM
@MCUKnight11 - What happen was she knew had they made the movie or movies she would of been out of a job. Feige could run Marvel and Lucas film in his sleep 💤.
Matchesz
Matchesz - 5/4/2023, 2:09 PM
It's crazy how it's always one person standing in the way of great movies, first Avid Arad, then Victoria Alonso and now Kathleen Kennedy. They always seem to have the most out of touch people in charge of these multi million dollar films, it legit feels like politics but I guess thats what Disney's into these days...
UncleHarm1
UncleHarm1 - 5/4/2023, 6:17 PM
@Matchesz - Very apt metaphor lol. You don't have to be good at what you do to make it in Hollywood or politics, just have to convince people you are. Once ur in ur in, at least until you get cancelled on twitter.
DevilsDreams
DevilsDreams - 5/5/2023, 4:29 AM
@Matchesz - you're probably right... in Kennedy you have someone leading a brand that doesn't seem to understand the brand as a whole.
Biggest folly she made was to moan in an interview about Star Wars being harder than something like Marvel as they didn't have an expanded universe, books or comic books to fall back on for source material... muppet...

#FireKathleenKennedy
bkmeijer1
bkmeijer1 - 5/4/2023, 2:26 PM
That would've been wild. But a Star Wars movie from the Russos is a thing that can still happen though I guess. Atleast, I really want that now
AnthonyVonGeek
AnthonyVonGeek - 5/4/2023, 2:29 PM
🎶Hey hey, Ho Ho, Kathleen Kennedy has to go🎶
DevilsDreams
DevilsDreams - 5/5/2023, 4:31 AM
@AnthonyVonGeek - #FireKathleenKennedy
soberchimera
soberchimera - 5/4/2023, 2:33 PM
Not a lot of Star Wars news on Star Wars Day eh?
clintthahamster
clintthahamster - 5/4/2023, 2:46 PM
Amazing to see y'all continue to give Feige a pass for the current state of the MCU, but lay the entirety of the blame for Star Wars at Kennedy's feet. Just some of the choicest misogyny out there, really top notch stuff.
grif
grif - 5/4/2023, 2:48 PM
@ClintThaHamster - they both suck now
clintthahamster
clintthahamster - 5/4/2023, 2:59 PM
@grif - That seems to be the consensus. Why do think it is that no one on this site seems to blame Feige for the state of the MCU, whereas every article about Star Wars has numerous calls to fire Kennedy?
FireandBlood
FireandBlood - 5/4/2023, 3:08 PM
@ClintThaHamster - Tbf I’ve seen a lot of people drag Feige as of late, but it really is deeper than just blaming Feige or Kennedy for everything. For Marvel right now, this Multiverse saga that probably sounds amazing on paper just isn’t hitting the way it should, and there’s so many factors as to why it’s not. With Star Wars, Lennedy made the wrong movie of having Abrams spearhead the big screen side of things over Filoni, who for the past 15 years now, has been the one really developing the franchise. But Star Wars has always been a tricky one. So much of what people love how was hated 10 years ago, and so much of what fans said they wanted they now hate, like all the OG callbacks. But I think the key is for people like Feige and Kennedy is just to keep on working with the right creatives, studying whatever wrong turns they take, and doing better as they go along because the show doesn’t stop, and the worst thing they could do is listen to any fans who are to fickle to ever really know what they want.
soberchimera
soberchimera - 5/4/2023, 3:21 PM
@ClintThaHamster - Yes, because our critiques about Kennedy's handling of the Star Wars genre have been entirely focused on her gender. And I don't think anyone has given Feige a pass for Phase 4, Feige and the MCU are basically synonymous at this point, you can't critique one without critiquing the other.
clintthahamster
clintthahamster - 5/4/2023, 4:43 PM
@soberchimera - The same could be said of Kennedy and Lucasfilm, though. And I'm not in any way saying that your critiques of the quality of Star Wars are based on her gender, but the constant calls for "Kennedy's got to go" are not matched by constant calls for Feige to resign or be fired.

Anyhoo, just an observation. I'm gonna crawl back in my hole and resume dodging GotG3 spoilers for the next 24 hours.
soberchimera
soberchimera - 5/4/2023, 4:50 PM
@ClintThaHamster - The MCU has been far more successful at least the initial 3 phases with fans than Disney's Star Wars films of which, only Rogue One has been mostly warmly received. So not really an equitable comparison if you ask me.
clintthahamster
clintthahamster - 5/4/2023, 5:17 PM
@soberchimera - Outside the usual troll echo chambers, Force Awakens, Rogue One, Mandalorian, Andor, and even the Last Jedi were all warmly received. Marvel's output's been higher, but I'd argue that they have a similar hit-to-miss ratio, overall.
Blergh
Blergh - 5/5/2023, 3:05 AM
@ClintThaHamster - sentiment on TLJ hasn’t been positive anywhere except RT
DevilsDreams
DevilsDreams - 5/5/2023, 4:36 AM
@PlusUltra - It has zero to do with her gender! it's to do with the fact that she doesn't understand the product and doesn't really seem to want to.

In an interview with Rolling Stone she stated; "Every one of these movies is a particularly hard nut to crack. There’s no source material. We don’t have comic books. We don’t have 800-page novels. We don’t have anything..."

This is a clear indication that she doesn't know what she's talking about! Star Wars potentially has one of the biggest expanded universes, but she somehow missed the decades worth of books...?
DevilsDreams
DevilsDreams - 5/5/2023, 4:40 AM
@ClintThaHamster - One difference could be that Feige does seem to love and know about the product, yes the ball is getting dropped recently, but the early phases were fantastic overall, Kennedy has fumbled from the start and doesn't seem to care about Star Wars in the same way Feige seems to care about Marvel.

The biggest red flag from Kennedy was when she stated to Rolling Stone: "Every one of these movies is a particularly hard nut to crack. There’s no source material. We don’t have comic books. We don’t have 800-page novels. We don’t have anything..."
Now I understand why it was "reset" from the existing EU, but to fall so far from the source material has upset a number of fans,
clintthahamster
clintthahamster - 5/5/2023, 7:33 AM
@Blergh - False. It was widely well reviewed, and had an "A" audience grade via CinemaScore after the opening weekend. It was only after the online bullying of Tran, petulant review bombing, and general constant bitching on the internet from a vocal minority of trolls and adult babies that followed that the perception started to shift, but that didn't stop it from grossing a full billion dollars over its budget.

The biggest mistake Star Wars/Disney/maybe even Kennedy made was listening to the assholes that didn't like it.
clintthahamster
clintthahamster - 5/5/2023, 7:38 AM
@DevilsDreams - If you're upset that they didn't make movies from the EU stories, you should be mad at one person: George Lucas. He's the one that zero plans for the beloved OT characters, who waited nearly 20 years to roll out the prequels, and who botched them so badly that there was limited interest in following them up. He's the one that sold his interest in Lucasfilm to Disney and left Kennedy in charge, but only after all of the OT actors were all too old to fulfill the rich potential of all the EU stories. It's Lucas' indolence that brought us to this point.
DevilsDreams
DevilsDreams - 5/5/2023, 8:52 AM
@ClintThaHamster - It's not really a case of being upset. I like Star Wars and will try to enjoy what's produced, some I'll like some I may not.

That aside, Lucasfilm and Lucas by proxy approved all of the EU books, allowing them to sit as a cannon for the universe for a number of years, from my understanding he did have a sequel trilogy plan laid out, however Disney and Kennedy chose to go in a different direction with a soft reset as such.

Which I do kind of understand given the time passed, but to come out with a silly statement saying there is no source material to reference shows her lack of engagement, if she was engaged and fully cared then she would know about the EU material rather than saying there is nothing.
soberchimera
soberchimera - 5/5/2023, 9:08 AM
@ClintThaHamster - I'm not even going to touch on Last Jedi, if you honestly think that was warmly received, you must've been on an internet detox in 2017. Force Awakens hasn't aged well and is basically just regarded as a plagiarism of A New Hope. Mandalorian and Andor's reception has more to do with Favreau, Filoni, and Gilroy's involvement than Kennedy's guiding hand. And you're right Marvel has distributed far more than Disney Star Wars and the overall attitude towards the franchise from the fanbase 2008-2018 was much much higher than Star Wars projects 2015-2023 and even their flagship show Mandalorian S3 wasn't universally well received.
clintthahamster
clintthahamster - 5/5/2023, 9:30 AM
@soberchimera - I would absolutely agree that the Last Jedi was poorly received on sites like this and on certain corners of Twitter, among other dark corners of the internet, but (and sorry for the cliche here) the internet is not the real world. The vast, vast majority of moviegoers don't spend all day on Twitter and the comment sections of sites like this.

It is inarguably true that TLJ was critically well reviewed (certified fresh on RT, "universal acclaim" on metacritic, etc) hugely financially successful, and generally well liked by audiences up to the point where a small, vocal minority people that didn't like it spent a lot of time and energy on a concerted effort to change that perception. And it worked. Disney "course corrected" and we wound up with Rise of Skywalker. Great work, everyone!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars:_The_Last_Jedi#Critical_response
clintthahamster
clintthahamster - 5/5/2023, 9:44 AM
@DevilsDreams - I'd say that it was less a "statement," which in a corporate setting implies a thoroughly vetted PR proclamation, and more of an off-the-cuff response during an interview. And at the time, she was correct. They'd made the decision (right or wrong) to relegate the EU to "Legends" status, and only had the previous movies and Filoni-produced animation to draw on.

But there's good news! With the reintroduction of Thrawn to canon, they've made it clear that they will be drawing on the EU moving forward.
soberchimera
soberchimera - 5/5/2023, 10:23 AM
@ClintThaHamster - And what was the audience score on RT for Last Jedi? And on Metacritic? You can go ahead and blame review bombing if you want, but TLJ made $730M less than Force Awakens, that should be very telling how many people went back for repeat viewings or went at all.
clintthahamster
clintthahamster - 5/5/2023, 10:57 AM
@soberchimera - RT and Metacritic audience scores don't verify whether the viewer has seen the movie. Cinema Score does. And sure, after weeks of constant badmouthing on the internet, it's possible that audience turnout waned for the sequel.

You wanna know another sequel that didn't do as well as it's predecessor? Empire Strikes Back. It grossed $98M less than Star Wars during it's initial box office run. That's $343 million in 2023 dollars. Return of the Jedi went on to OUT GROSS ESB by $43 million. That doesn't mean that ESB is the worst movie of the OT.
clintthahamster
clintthahamster - 5/5/2023, 11:03 AM
@soberchimera - Like, I'm not trying to tell you that you liked Last Jedi. You clearly didn't, and that's fine. Furthermore, there's no doubt that there's legitimate criticisms to be made of the film.

But you have to admit that there was a significant, concerted, bad-faith effort to review bomb the film, and it's simply true that Kelly Marie Tran was bullied off of social media for the crime of *checks notes* accepting a role in Star Wars. To deny those facts is revisionist history, plain and simple.
soberchimera
soberchimera - 5/5/2023, 11:12 AM
@ClintThaHamster - And media outlets used those harassments against Tran to completely shift the narrative away from the legitimate complaints against the film and morph it into "only racists and misogynists disliked The Last Jedi". To focus solely on the Tran situation and not the many valid critiques from level-headed moviegoers is revisionist.
clintthahamster
clintthahamster - 5/5/2023, 12:04 PM
@soberchimera - The racists and misogynists made it easy to shift that narrative, unfortunately, but yes, as I said in the comment that you're responding to, "there's no doubt that there's legitimate criticisms to be made of the film."
FireandBlood
FireandBlood - 5/5/2023, 3:05 PM
@DevilsDreams - The source material for Star Wars is Ep 1-6 and Clone Wars. All those other books/comics and games were ignored by Lucas way before Kennedy took over. Star Wars isn’t Marvel and the EU isn’t the 616.
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