News of creative differences on the next Star Wars film continue to paint a familiar picture of the modern day Lucasfilm.
It appears the biggest villain in the galaxy far, far away is not the Sith or the First Order, but the most malleable two-word term in entertainment: creative differences. Patty Jenkins is the latest filmmaker to reportedly fall foul of creative disagreements with Lucasfilm, with Matthew Belloni reporting in his newsletter that Jenkins couldn’t agree a script for her movie Rogue Squadron with studio bosses and “wasn’t willing to dick around” as she has a Wonder Woman threequel to make over at Warner Bros.
Belloni’s newsletter also suggests that the long-mooted Star Wars trilogy from the mind of The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson has been “shelved” due to a lack of creative alignment. Certainly, any mention of it has been conspicuously absent from recent franchise announcements and updates from Lucasfilm and head honcho Kathleen Kennedy, despite occasional reassurances from Johnson – who is currently making Knives Out 2 for Netflix – that he’s still beavering away on the project. It was first announced just prior to the release of The Last Jedi in 2017, with little forward movement in the subsequent four years.
Jenkins and Johnson might be the two current high-profile examples of creative differences seemingly shuffling the Star Wars deck behind the scenes. But, since Disney bought Lucasfilm and began pursuing Jedi-adjacent projects, there have been plenty of examples of films and filmmakers disappearing in a single swish of a lightsaber.
Colin Trevorrow – Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker
When Disney announced its Sequel Trilogy, it immediately began to assemble a list of rising directorial stars. JJ Abrams was a well-known pair of hands for The Force Awakens, with Johnson – then best known for Looper – attached for its sequel. In 2015, the studio hired Colin Trevorrow to helm Episode IX on the back of his mammoth success with another huge legacy franchise, guiding Jurassic World to what was then the quickest $1bn haul in box office history.
In the summer of 2017, though, Disney hired British writer Jack Thorne to reshape Trevorrow and co-writer Derek Connolly’s script, which was titled Duel Of The Fates. A month later, Trevorrow was let go from the project and replaced by the returning Abrams. Some suggested that the critical drubbing handed to Trevorrow’s strange drama The Book Of Henry was partly responsible for his sacking, but that has never been substantiated by anyone involved.
The script for Trevorrow’s planned movie was leaked online in January 2020 amid negative critical response to The Rise Of Skywalker, with the draft later confirmed to be real. It was positively received by Star Wars fans. Trevorrow has since described his departure from the film as “traumatic”. He retains a “story by” credit on the finished movie and donated his fee to the Alexander Devine Children’s Hospice in Berkshire.
Gareth Edwards – Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
Unlike the other filmmakers on this list, Gareth Edwards retains full credit for directing the 2016 Star Wars prequel Rogue One. Edwards finished shooting the movie in the early part of that year, with Tony Gilroy drafted in to help shepherd scheduled reshoots in the summer of that year. Gilroy’s reshoots were more than just cosmetic and amounted to a reworking of parts of the film, to the extent that he earned a screenwriting credit on the finished movie.
Gilroy told the Moment With Brian Koppelman podcast in 2018 that the movie was in “a swamp” when he was brought in to shape reshoots. He added: “They were in so much terrible, terrible trouble that all you could do was improve their position.” Ben Mendelsohn said that there’s an “enormously different” version of around 20 to 30 of the scenes.
There’s still a lot that we don’t know about the process of making Rogue One and the lengthy period of reshoots which made it the movie we ultimately saw. But it seems clear that there were multiple creative forces at play – and not all of them were pulling in the same direction.
Phil Lord and Christopher Miller – Solo: A Star Wars Story
This is perhaps the most notorious case of “creative differences” in the Star Wars franchise and still the subject of many “what if?” musings. The prospect of a Han Solo origin tale had been in the ether for years and so few were surprised when it was one of Disney’s first announcements after getting the keys to Lucasfilm’s universe. People were surprised, though, when Phil Lord and Christopher Miller were unveiled as directors, hot from the success of the subversive, brilliant The LEGO Movie.
The duo began filming Solo in January 2017 but, six months later, they were let go by the studio with only three weeks of the original shooting schedule left. Ron Howard was appointed to take over for that final furlong, as well as five weeks of reshoots. Reports at the time suggested that Lord and Miller attempted to make the movie in their trademark comedic and semi-improvised style, which didn’t chime with the vision of Star Wars bosses.
There’s a lot to like about the finished Solo: A Star Wars Story – and its box office probably bore the brunt of The Last Jedi‘s divisiveness more than it damaged itself – but it’s certainly intriguing to consider how different the movie might have been if Lord and Miller had got their way.
David Benioff/D.B. Weiss – Untitled Trilogy
As the television behemoth of Game Of Thrones came to an end in 2019, showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss were hot properties in Hollywood. They signed on to make a trilogy of Star Wars movies and subsequently inked a massive, separate deal with Netflix worth somewhere in the region of $250m. In a statement issued in October 2019, Benioff and Weiss said they “could not do justice to both Star Wars and our Netflix projects” and were stepping back from Star Wars as a result.
The Hollywood Reporter said there was more to the story than that, suggesting Lucasfilm wasn’t convinced Benioff and Weiss could manage a blockbuster trilogy while also working on multiple projects for Netflix. As a result, they were reportedly jettisoned from the Millennium Falcon before they got too far through the creative process.
Josh Trank/James Mangold – Untitled Boba Fett Movie
Despite appearing only briefly in the Original Trilogy – after debuting as an animated character in the memory-holed Holiday Special – Boba Fett has always been one of the most popular supporting players in the Star Wars franchise. He’s due to get a TV show of his own at the end of this year with The Book Of Boba Fett, after reappearing in the second season of The Mandalorian.
But before Fett returned on TV, a film project had been in the offing for a long time. X-Men producer and director Simon Kinberg was attached to write a script in 2013, with Josh Trank attached to direct a solo Fett movie the following year. After the Disney takeover, the studio announced a standalone film about Fett in 2018, with Logan filmmaker James Mangold in the director’s chair. The project didn’t last too long though, with Disney ultimately deciding to push ahead with The Mandalorian rather than focus on a film about Boba Fett. Now, though, the bounty hunter is set to get his time in the sun(s) on Tatooine with the new series.
