Disney and Lucasfilm’s previously announced Star Wars movie starring Daisy Ridley as Rey, which would have focused on her rebuilding a new Jedi Order, has been in limbo for a few years now. Multiple writers have attempted to bang out a script, but nothing’s come of it yet. Now, one of those past writers, Lost co-creator and executive producer/creator on DC’s upcoming Lanterns show, Damon Lindelof, has spilled the beans on what his version of the movie would have been.
On May 18, Lindelof sat down with The Ringer-verse podcast (via IGN) to chat about Star Wars, including his thoughts and predictions about the upcoming Mandalorian and Grogu movie. He also talked about his own failed attempt to write the Rey-focused Star Wars sequel. Before the movie was even announced in 2023, Disney had hired and then, in Linedof’s words, fired him from the project before announcing new writers who also seem to be struggling.
“Just to talk about the Bantha in the room,” said Lindelof. “I was fired off of a Star Wars movie. They asked me, ‘What do you think a Star Wars movie should be?’ And I said, ‘Here’s what it should be.’ And they said, ‘Great, you’re hired!’ Then two years later, I was fired. And so I was wrong. At least through that prism. But what we were attempting to do, my partners Justin Britt-Gibson, Rayna McClendon, and I, what we were attempting to do [with the film was say] there is a Force of nostalgia, and there is a Force of revision, and they are at odds with one another. Let’s do the Protestant Reformation inside Star Wars. And it didn’t work.”
Lindelof further explained that he’s not sure he was fired just because the script wasn’t working, adding that Lucasfilm really seemed to “like the premise,” but that Star Wars lacks a center right now. A focus. And trying to figure that out, expand the franchise, continue on past Episode 9 Rise of Skywalker, and still tell a story that has the right tone is a massive challenge.
“It’s the old tanker equation, which is you turn the wheel and it takes five minutes before it turns a little bit like this. That idea of, we’re looking for the center of Star Wars. And when [The Force Awakens] came out, we all knew what it was. It was Rey, and it was Finn, and it was Poe, and then we were migrating back in Luke, Leia, Han, and Chewy, and all those guys. But we got the sense that when this new trilogy was over, we were going to be launching with these new characters, and that was the center of Star Wars. The new question is, are Mando and Grogu the center of Star Wars now?”
I don’t think anyone, not even Lucasfilm, can answer that question right now. We’ll have to wait and see how the upcoming Mando film does at the box office later this week to really get a sense of whether or not these characters can make the leap from TV to movies and if they will be, in the words of Lindelof, the “center” of Star Wars.
