THE LAST JEDI Director On Mapping Out His New STAR WARS Trilogy; Says He May Not Direct All Three Films
In a new interview, Rian Johnson outlines the events that led to him taking the helm of a brand new Star Wars trilogy. He also says it was "never in the cards" for him to step in to direct Episode IX...
As Star Wars: The Last Jedi's release date approaches, director Rian Johnson has begun to shed a little more light on his plans for a brand new trilogy of films that'll be set in a completely different part of the galaxy far, far away.
While chatting to Collider, Johnson discusses the events that led to Lucasfilm approving the project. As it turns out, there was never any talk of him staying on to helm Episode IX after original director Colin Trevorrow left, and his pitch for the new trilogy basically arose from Kathleen Kennedy wanting to continue to work with him once The Last Jedi had wrapped.
"It was totally separate, it was never in the cards for me to [direct Episode 9]. I was always gonna finish [The Last Jedi] and then hand it off to the next filmmaker. But the idea for the new trilogy was completely separate; it just came because we were getting to the end of this process and kind of getting sad that we had to stop working. But like Kathy [Kennedy] and all the folks at Disney, we were just like, ‘We’ve had a really good time. How do we keep this party going a little longer?
We were just generally talking about what could we do and I was like, ‘What would be most interesting to me is…’ and then I just said—it wasn’t even a specific pitch, the pitch was: ‘A new trilogy. Three movies, one story. New characters, new places. Let’s start fresh.’ That was the most exciting thing I could possibly think of and Kathy really responded to that and we’re gonna give it a shot.”
Johnson goes on to reveal that he's not actually sure if he's going to direct all three instalments of the new trilogy yet, as right now the plan is just to map the entire story out and helm the first one.
It's probably going to be some time before we find out what these new Star Wars movies will be about, but be sure to let us know what you'd most like to see them focus on in the comments below.
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Mark Cassidy is a writer, photographer, amateur filmmaker, and Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic from Dublin, Ireland.