In what is perhaps the most astounding vote of confidence in recent Hollywood history, Lucasfilm and Disney recently gave the thumbs-up to a brand new Star Wars trilogy from Rian Johnson, the creative force behind The Last Jedi.
It’s an agreement that will essentially future-proof Lucasfilm’s crown jewel far into the 2020s, while Johnson has also vowed to deliver an original story teeming with new characters. But what makes this deal all the more impressive is the fact that Disney agreed to Johnson’s new-fangled trilogy without being pitched an actual, tangible story. You know, the actual foundation on which a film is built?
Via /Film, The Last Jedi‘s writer-director confirmed that Disney and Lucasfilm pledged their support to his creative vision – even if that vision is yet to really take shape.
There’s not much to talk about, honestly. I’m just at the beginning of the beginning of it.
Instead, it seems the Powers That Be were more impressed by Johnson’s desire to push Star Wars into uncharted territory – far away from the confines of the current Skywalker saga.
The director continued:
No. It came about because we were getting to the end of making this and again, I knew I wasn’t doing the next one. And I had had a really good time not just making this movie, but working with Kathy and also working with Disney, working with Bob Iger, Alan Horn, and Alan Berg. And we just had just a really good experience. And we were all…it was like last week of senior year.
We were cleaning out our lockers. And all getting kind of sad. And saying, how do we keep working together? And that I threw out, I said, the most interesting thing to me would be a new trilogy, one story told over three movies. Go new places, meet new folks, come up with a new story to tell in the Star Wars universe. The sky’s the limit. That sounds thrilling. And they really responded to that. So we’re off, yeah.
Far beyond The Last Jedi, Rian Johnson’s new Star Wars trilogy will likely come to fruition in the 2020s, by which point film fans will have already seen Solo: A Star Wars Story, Episode IX, and that mooted spinoff featuring the great Obi-Wan Kenobi. Cliché though it may be, there’s really never been a better time to be a fan of Lucasfilm’s galaxy far, far away.