Puck news was just taking Lucasfilm and its President Kathleen Kennedy to task today, basically asking what the hell is up with that studio and its lack of studio movies. The answer might be read as, especially in the face of tonight’s news, a lot of things they didn’t know.
The Hollywood Reporter has a new piece up today that’s making that attack look a little thin and silly in retrospect, noting that, well, lots has been happening. It’s just that outlets like Puck News didn’t know about them. Today, we got details on Damon Lindelof’s “Star Wars” movie. Yes, he’s writing one, developing one, and already has a collaborator and director in documentary filmmaker Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, who directed some episodes of Marvel’s “Ms. Marvel” that were released this past summer.
THR adds to today’s news that Lindelof has found a co-writer in Justin Britt-Gibson, a hot, rising star writer who was an executive story editor on Guillermo del Toro’s vampire series, “The Strain,” and a writer of Starz’s “The Counterpart,” that starred J.K. Simmons.
To get to that place—hiring a co-writer—Lindelof put together a secret writer’s room after “Star Wars” Celebration in May, presumably to generate ideas and then pick the best one to co-write with (though details of the actual intent are a bit vague. Writers picked to be in that room were Patrick Somerville, who created and showran “Station Eleven” and wrote on Lindelof’s “The Leftovers,” Rayna McClendon, a consulting producer on Lucasfilm’s “Obi-Wan Kenobi “and a writer on the company’s upcoming “Willow” series; and journalist/podcaster/writer/creator Andy Greenwald who created and showran the series “Briarpatch” starring Rosario Dawson (the show unfortunately only lasted one season). Other writers were in attendance too, but they were not named.
THR adds that Dave Filoni, a protégé of Star Wars creator George Lucas, and the current star of Lucasfilm’s TV empire alongside Jon Favreau, may have been there, but it’s not confirmed. The writer’s room held a two-week session in July, and after the story had been cracked, Lindelof and Britt-Gibson got to work.
There’s more and more details on the film itself. The movie will be set after the events of “Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker,” and while it won’t be a direct sequel or continuation, it could contain some of the characters from those films. It is also a standalone movie that could lead to more films, but sources tell THR that Lucasfilm is taking each film and story one at a time instead of creating big trilogies.
Lucasfilm hasn’t had a “Star Wars” film in theaters since the expensive failure of 2018’s “Solo: A Star Wars” story, a film that flopped so hard, it seemed to put a full pause on “Star Wars” movies which instead pivoted to TV on Disney+.
Currently, only a handful of “Star Wars” films are still in production after Patty Jenkins’ “Rogue Squadron” was put on the back burner. They include the “Star Wars” film that “Loki” writer Michael Waldron is writing based on an idea from Marvel’s Kevin Feige and a movie being written by Taika Waititi and “1917” writer Krysty Wilson-Cairns.
The earliest the film could arrive is December 2025, Disney’s next date, set aside for a Lucasfilm movie, and given the speed of news coming out of this one, it actually seems more than possible. Lindelof was given shit by fans for years for the ending of “Lost” and the writing on Ridley Scott’s “Prometheus,” but bounced back hard in their favor after the success of HBO’s excellent “Watchmen” series.