Damon Lindelof said that he was "fired" from a Star Wars film after two years of development.
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The Lost showrunner said that his movie was about a "force of nostalgia" and a "force of revision."
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Lindelof said that the writing process on the film was "really hard" and "slow."
Damon Lindelofis sharing new information about his brief foray into theStar Warsuniverse.
TheLostandWatchmenshowrunner, who previously penned sci-fi franchise movies likePrometheusandStar Trek Into Darkness, discussed the unmadeStar Warsproject that he spent two years developing.
"I was fired off of aStar Warsmovie," Lindelof said during a broader conversation about the state of the franchise with theHouse of Rpodcast. "They asked me, 'What do you think aStar Warsmovie should be?' And I said, 'Here's what it should be.' And they said, 'Great, you're hired.' And then two years later, I was fired."
Entertainment Weeklyhas reached out to Lucasfilm for comment.
Lindelof explained that he and his creative partners on the project, Justin Britt-Gibson and Rayna McClendon, wanted theirStar Warsfilm to include meta-commentary about nostalgia and evolution.
"What we were attempting to do was to have this conversation in the movie, which is to say, there is a force of nostalgia and there is a force of revision, and they are at odds with one another," he explained. "And let's do the Protestant Reformation insideStar Wars. And it didn't work."
Lindelof doesn't think that his superiors at Lucasfilm objected to the idea behind his project. "That didn't feel necessarily that risky," he said. "They seemed to like the premise."
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Instead, he thinks that he "may have been fired" for other complicating factors, noting that he felt that he wasn't writing quickly enough. "The writing was really hard, it was slow — the tone, getting it right," he said, adding that he struggled with "where it was inside of the canon, what its relationship was with toEpisode IX, is it starting a new trilogy?"
The screenwriter said that theStar Warsfilms are "so massive" and "so big" that redirecting the trajectory of the franchise can take an extraordinary amount of time and effort.
"It's the old sort of like tanker equation, which is, you turn the wheel and it takes five minutes before it turns a little bit," he said. "We're looking for the center ofStar Wars, and whenEpisode VIIcame out, we all knew what it was. It was Rey and it was Finn and it was Poe and it was like all these, and then we were migrating back in, Luke and Leia and Han and Chewie and all those guys.”
Lindelof said that it was difficult to locate the franchise's center after Disney's sequel trilogy wrapped withThe Rise of Skywalkerin 2019. "We've got the sense that when this new trilogy is over, we are going to be launching with these new characters and that was the center ofStar Wars," he said, explaining that he doesn't know if the characters fromThe Mandalorianare now the primary figures in a galaxy far, far away. "The new question is: are Mando and Grogu the center ofStar Warsnow?"
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Lindelof'sStar Warsproject wasannounced in 2022, with Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy (Ms. Marvel) set to direct the film.Varietyreported in 2023 that Lindelof and Britt-Gibsonhad exited the top-secret project, withSteven Knight(Peaky Blinders) penning a new screenplay for the movie. Shortly thereafter, Lindelof said that he was"asked to leave"the franchise, and said that he wished the creative team "the best of luck" on the film.
You can listen to Lindelof's full appearance onHouse of Rabove.
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Damon Lindelof said that he was "fired" from a Star Wars film after two years of development. Key points ...
