You have to hand it to Rian Johnson. With The Last Jedi, the Knives Out helmer made himself arguably the most divisive director in Star Wars history, narrowly beating out J.J. Abrams and George Lucas himself. Lucasfilm clearly had no idea the controversy Episode VIII would cause during the making of it, though, as its release back in 2017 was quickly followed up with the news that Johnson had been hired to helm a entire movie trilogy.
Once TLJ went down the way it did, though, movement stalled on the trilogy, with Johnson instead taking on other projects. Occasional updates have followed over the past five years, then, but nothing pointed to the films being in active development. Sure enough, Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy has now confirmed the trilogy’s unsurprising fate.
In an eye-opening interview with Vanity Fair, touching on everything that the studio has cooking in their Star Wars oven right now, Kennedy revealed that Johnson’s movies have been put on the back-burner. “Rian has been unbelievably busy with Knives Out and the deal that he made at Netflix for multiple movies,” the exec stated.
Back in March 2021, Johnson signed a lucrative deal with Netflix — thought to have earned him a cool $100 million — to produce two sequels to his 2019 smash-hit crime thriller Knives Out for the streaming giant. Fans figured at the time that this well and truly meant the end for his Star Wars trilogy, and now we know that this is officially the case.
It was never known exactly what Johnson had planned for his films, although it was believed they would be set after Rise of Skywalker, with fans long suspecting that the force-sensitive Broom Boy from the end of Last Jedi would feature somehow. Maybe someday his Star Wars trilogy will get made, but for now Johnson’s putting his focus on murder mysteries over lightsaber battles.
Knives Out 2 is scheduled to hit Netflix sometime later in 2022.
