New Report Casts Doubt Over Rian Johnson’s Star Wars Trilogy

Rian Johnson is not one to rest on his laurels.

Coming out of The Last Jedi and its billion-dollar success story, the filmmaker would be forgiven for wanting to take a break from blockbuster movies, considering how demanding they are. But Johnson had other plans, and so too did Lucasfilm.

The result? A totally new Star Wars trilogy set to feature original characters which will most likely exist in its own little corner of that galaxy far, far away – and therefore remain independent from the other trilogy in the works from David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, the current showrunners behind HBO’s Game of Thrones. But that’s just it.

You see, while the films from Weiss and Benioff are locked in and confirmed at this point, there’s been a constant sense of doubt swirling around Johnson’s trilogy. Rumors have pointed to it being cancelled for a while now and though the director himself has told us it’s definitely still happening, a new report from THR might say otherwise.

Buried in their article about Kathleen Kennedy having her contract extended, the outlet dropped this little nugget:

Lucasfilm is developing feature projects from Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, as well as a potential trilogy from Rian Johnson, the filmmaker behind Last Jedi. Johnson, however, is currently prepping to shoot a detective thriller that is to star Daniel Craig.

What’s strange is that they say “potential trilogy” from Johnson, whereas they write that Lucasfilm IS developing “feature projects” from Benioff and Weiss. Sure, this could mean nothing, but the language they use is certainly curious and only adds more fuel to the fire.

Most likely, what this indicates is that the studio’s decided to slow down a bit and just take things one film at a time before committing to an entire new trilogy. Or, it could mean that the whole thing has been cancelled given the divisive reception to The Last Jedi.

Either way, it’ll likely be some time before we hear anything concrete on this, given that Disney’s looking to hit the brakes on the franchise for the next little while. But at the very least, we can all look forward to Star Wars: Episode IX, which we know will 100% be here on December 20th, 2019.