More than three years ago, Lucasfilm quickly announced that Rian Johnson, the writer-director of “Star Wars: The Last Jedi,” was set to write and direct a new trilogy of non-Skywalker films that would eventually be released by the studio. It was huge news because, at that time, ‘The Last Jedi’ had yet to be released and everyone was eagerly anticipating what Johnson had in store for fans with his first ‘Star Wars’ film. Boy, what a difference three years makes, huh? Now, with no news about the trilogy in a long time and the polarizing reaction to ‘The Last Jedi,’ fans just assumed the films were shelved. Well, apparently not.
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Enter author/fan Sariah Wilson. After winning a charity auction, Wilson was given the opportunity to have a Zoom chat with Rian Johnson. And though she isn’t able to post any sort of recordings or transcripts, she went ahead and broke the internet by asking Johnson about the status of his long-in-development trilogy of “Star Wars” films. Spoiler alert – they’re still a thing, apparently.
“I’m just going to post this now because I can see that I’m going to get a lot of requests – Yes, Rian’s SW trilogy is still on,” Wilson tweeted. “No dates or timelines because he has other projects going on, but it is happening. THAT IS ALL I KNOW ABOUT IT.”
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Now, we’d be remiss if we didn’t say that just because Rian Johnson told a fan during an impromptu, unofficial chat that his “Star Wars” trilogy is going to happen doesn’t mean that it is, in fact, going to happen. While we want to believe everything Rian Johnson says, it’s becoming more and more difficult to see a world where the filmmaker is given free rein to make his own trilogy of “Star Wars” films.
First, there’s the reaction to ‘The Last Jedi,’ which tends to fall into two camps. There are the folks that think it’s the most mature ‘Star Wars’ film in decades. Then you have people that want to burn Johnson at the stake for somehow retroactively ruining their childhoods and kicking their puppies. And then, of course, there’s the fact that Lucasfilm just hasn’t said anything about these films in a long time. Instead, the studio has been talking about a new slate of films from folks like Patty Jenkins, Taika Waititi, and Kevin Feige. If there was really a Rian Johnson-helmed ‘Star Wars’ trilogy still in the works, you’d imagine Lucasfilm would talk about it even in passing, right?
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As for any other news that came from Wilson’s interview with Johnson, she said that the filmmaker did confirm that Kylo Ren and Rey were developing romantic feelings in ‘The Last Jedi,’ as many have wondered what the nature of their relationship was in that film.
“If anybody questions whether or not Reylo were meant to be romantic, you can stop speculating. Rian absolutely saw them as a romance,” she tweeted. “I mean, there was more to their stories and growth and arcs, but he saw them as romantic and intimate.”
So, at least there’s that.
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Regardless of what is happening with Lucasfilm and Rian Johnson, at least we know that the “Knives Out” sequel is still going to happen. And honestly, that’s probably a more exciting prospect.
