Writer/director/producer Simon Kinberg has got to be riding high at this exact moment. His Apple TV+ series “Invasion,” just got picked up for a second season and his new Universal spy movie, “The 355,” starring Jessica Chastain, Penelope Cruz, Lupita Nyong’o, and more is due in theaters next month (it’s on our list of the 100 Most Anticipated Movies Of 2022). The Discourse podcast host Mike DeAngelo recently talked to Kinberg about “Invasion” for his podcast (you can listen to that here or below) and covered various topics.
Sure, a little “X-Men” was broached, Kinberg was a producer and eventually, director (“Dark Phoenix”) on those films for years, helping usher in the younger generation of X-actors like Michael Fassbender, James McAvoy, and Jennifer Lawrence (you can read more about this Marvel/”X-Men” thoughts here).
But what no one asks Kinberg about, or possibly even remembers, is that he was a major force at Lucasfilm at one point. Some reports said he was once set to produce and write Josh Trank’s “Boba Fett,” a Lucasfilm movie that fell apart once Trank’s disastrous showing, supposed “erratic behavior” on “Fantastic Four” (which Kinberg produced) was revealed to the public (Lawrence Kasdan was also rumored to write the film). (Trank has pushed back on these claims several times, for what it’s worth and Kinberg defended him too.) Kinberg is also one of the co-creators of the much-beloved animated series “Star Wars Rebels” (along with Dave Filoni and Lucasfilm story group member Carrie Beck).
Given that a “The Book Of Boba Fett” series is about to hit Disney+, and the characters of “Star Wars Rebels” all seemed poised to graduate to the live-action realm (and several have already, including Ahsoka Tano and the upcoming Sabine Wren), it seemed appropriate of us to ask Kinberg about his time at Lucasfilm (he was even rumored to be writing one of the original trilogy films at first).
For one, the writer/director said, no, he didn’t write the “Boba Fett,” film. “Well, I never wrote a script to ‘Boba Fett,’ but those other things, yes,” he said. The conversation went quickly, and so we were unable to circle back to whether the trade reports were wrong and Kinberg simply just never got around to writing it (and we reached out for clarification, but Kinberg was unavailable to comment further). Either way, just know there’s no old Simon Kinberg-penned “Boba Fett” script in the Lucasfilm vault and clearly “Book Of Boba Fett” exec producers, Robert Rodriguez, Jon Favreau, and Dave Filoni probably started from scratch.
Perhaps one of the other fascinating revelations from the conversation was the fact that Kinberg was enlisted into the secretive “Star Wars” story group that was put together to dream up new “Star Wars” films in the early 2010s. Now, some of this was reported, but Kinberg said that group was put together before George Lucas sold Lucasfilm to Disney in 2012. So imagine, you’re George Lucas, you’ve taken about a five or six-year break from “Star Wars.” You thought you were done (‘Revenge Of The Sith’ is 2010), you then change your mind, enlist several writers like Pixar’s Michael Arndt, “Star Wars” writer Lawrence Kasdan, Kinberg, and others, to dream up a whole new generation of “Star Wars” movies and in the middle of, or towards the end of that process, you peace out and sell it all to Disney, who then kicks most of these ideas to the curb (“Star Wars Rebels” in 2014, seems to be the only project that survived and small remnants of the new trilogy that began with “The Force Awakens” in 2015). That’s kind of mind-blowing.
But I digress. Here’s Kinberg talking about his time working at Lucasfilm and part of the “Star Wars” story group (this is probably circa 2011 through 2014, Kinberg seemingly phased out of Lucasfilm after season one of ‘Rebels’).
“[Working at Lucasfilm was], one of the most amazing experiences of my life, certainly my creative life,” Kinberg told The Playlist’s Discourse podcast. “[It] was, very early on, it was actually before Lucasfilm even sold to Disney,” he revealed.
“Kathleen Kennedy who’s a hero of mine hired me and Michael Arndt and Larry Kasdan to spend a bunch of time together just brainstorming with George Lucas on future Star Wars movies,” he continued. “And we spent time up at Skywalker Ranch…it was kind of like a writer’s room. We had whiteboards, and me and Larry and Michael and Kathy’s team headed by Kiri Hart, we would just work together in the daytime and at night we would have dinner at the ranch and drink and Larry would tell stories about the original Star Wars movies he worked on and the ‘Raiders’ movies and, you know, it was like heaven.”
Kinberg recalled the time they screened the finished first episode of “Star Wars Rebels” to Lucas and were extremely nervous about it.
“There was an amazing moment where [Dave] Filoni wanted to show the first episode of Rebels to George [Lucas],” he remembered. “And so we went up to the ranch and screened the first episode for George and I remember the whole time, I’ve never been more nervous in a screening for anything. I’ve been at premieres of movies that I’ve spent most of my life on. On ‘Mr. and Mrs. Smith,’ [ed. which he wrote] we screened a cut of it for Brad [Pitt] and Angelina [Jolie]. That was an early cut—that was pretty nerve-wracking, especially because I was a kid at the time. But screening something literally sitting next to George Lucas that is based on his universe was wild and the lights came up and I remember he looked and me and Dave and was like, ‘It’s good. It’s pretty good.’ Which is like very high praise from what I understand from George.”
So why did Kinberg leave his dream job at Lucasfilm and perhaps why he never did write that “Boba Fett” film? According to the filmmaker, it was a combination of things. Lucasfilm started moving away from certain projects they had dreamt up (“Boba Fett” being one of them after Trank quit the project?), and he became called towards the world of ‘X-Men’ which began to consume his life.
“I just got busy with other things and their focus also shifted away from some of the things we were working on,” Kinberg explained, seemingly sounding like he just slowly drifted away to other work. “So, there wasn’t any particular reason. And also, my involvement would sort of wax and wane over the years because sometimes I was so immersed in the ‘X-Men’ universe that I couldn’t really be present in the way that I needed to be present to focus on something as important as the ‘Star Wars’ universe. And there were other times that I was more available, and I was a part of it. So yeah, I would love to do more in the future. I love Dave [Filoni], I love Jon [Favreau], I love Kathy [Kennedy]. I love everyone involved and keep in touch with kind of all of them in one form or another.”
It’s a pretty fascinating conversation and you should listen to the entire thing below. – Additional reporting by DeAngelo.