The Star Wars galaxy is still reeling from the behind-the-scenes shakeup of Kathleen Kennedy’s exit from Lucasfilm last night. In an exit interview with Deadline filled with intriguing hints about the galaxy far, far away’s cinematic future, Kennedy also touched on one long-simmering potential project, and the legacy of a dark side to Star Wars‘ last decade of movie making in the process: the potential return of Rian Johnson.
Just before The Last Jedi released in 2017, Lucasfilm announced a new trilogy of films set to be helmed by the director, blissfully unaware that the movie, and Johnson’s lovingly iconoclastic interpretation of Star Wars, was about to spark a culture war that continues to impact Star Wars and culture at large to this day. In the long years since, both Johnson and Lucasfilm alike have stayed noncommittal, yet vaguely optimistic that the films may happen at some point—never saying enough to outright scrap them but never saying enough to indicate that they could come any time soon, as the studio endlessly iterated on its moviemaking plans.
“Once he made the Netflix deal and went off to start doing the Knives Out films, that has occupied a huge amount of his time. That’s the other thing that happens here,” Kennedy said of the long-delayed plans to have Johnson return. “After Shawn [Levy] and I started talking about Star Wars, Stranger Things kicks in and he was completely consumed for a while by that. That’s what happened with Rian.”
But then the outgoing president turned more candid—more candid than perhaps anyone involved in Star Wars has been about what she believed was the actual reason for holding off Johnson’s comeback. “I do believe he got spooked by the online negativity. I think Rian made one of the best Star Wars movies. He’s a brilliant filmmaker and he got spooked,” Kennedy acknowledged.
“This is the rough part. When people come into this space, I have every filmmaker and actors say to me, ‘What’s going to happen?’ They’re a little scared.”
Although Star Wars‘ brush with fandom toxicity didn’t start with The Last Jedi—not even in that toxicity’s contemporary culture war form, given some of the retrograde backlash to the mere existence of Rey and Finn in The Force Awakens prior to it—the movie sparked a firestorm the franchise is still yet to escape from almost ten years later. Time and time again, projects have weathered bad-faith attacks from the cultural right, and talent from Kelly Marie Tran, to Moses Ingram, to almost the entire cast of The Acolyte have all discussed the bigoted harassment they’ve endured simply for being part of Star Wars, and how at times Lucasfilm and Disney have failed to adequately curtail it.
“I’m honest, especially with the women that come into this space because they unfairly get targeted. I don’t try to sugarcoat it,” Kennedy said of how Lucasfilm has dealt with this toxic underbelly to Star Wars‘ audience. “And I emphasize that it’s a very small group of people, with loud megaphones. I truly do not believe that it’s the majority of the fans…. You can’t make it go away. All we can do is put our heads down and do the work and believe that we’re doing the best we can, telling the best story we can. And if somebody gets really nervous about it and doesn’t want to do it, I say, then don’t do it because I can’t tell you this won’t happen.”
While it’s not a definitive nail in the coffin on Johnson’s Star Wars trilogy, it’s the closest anyone has come—either from Lucasfilm’s side or Johnson’s—to giving an honest reason as to why the project is unlikely to see the light of day. But until that nail is driven in for good, there’s still hope for courage to prevail over fear.
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