Rian Johnson still intends to make his own Star Wars movie trilogy

Depending on who you ask, 2017’s The Last Jedi is either a bold Star Wars movie that takes thrilling risks and brings the franchise into the 21st century, or a heretical pile of garbage that must be purged from existence lest children see it and immediately start selling drugs and joining mercenary armies. Now that five years have passed since its release, the movie is back in the news, with director Rian Johnson saying he’s “even more proud” of the film half a decade on.

At one point, The Last Jedi was supposed to be the start of a long Star Wars journey for Johnson. He was on tap to direct his own trilogy of films, but we’ve heard precious little about that since. With Johnson currently making a couple of sequels to his hit Knives Out — the first is coming to Netflix is December — it looks like he’s properly moved on, right?

Apparently not. “I’ve stayed close to [Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy] and we get together often and talk about it,” Johnson told Empire. “It’s just at this point a matter of schedule and when it can happen. It would break my heart if I were finished, if I couldn’t get back in that sandbox at some point.”

Will Rian Johnson ever return to Star Wars?

Johnson’s comments more or less match up with what Kennedy said at Disney’s Star Wars Celebration event earlier this year. “Now, everybody’s so busy – genuinely busy and working on things. Rian had such a gigantic success with Knives Out that he’s very committed to try and get that done. So it’ll be a while. And we have to work three, five years in advance on what we’re doing. So that’s where that sits. But we love him.”

All of this makes sense, but looking at what happened to the Star Wars movies over the past couple of years makes me think there are some things these two aren’t saying. For instance, I have to wonder if Johnson wouldn’t be working on Star Wars movies right now had The Last Jedi not been hit with an enormous backlash online. By the same token, at one point Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss were going to make Star Wars movies, but then there was a backlash to the final season of that show and that project died on the vine.

But the wrath of Twitter lessens over time as the mob finds something new to be mad about. Maybe it always just a matter of waiting for the star (wars) to aline, and Johnson will return to the galaxy far, far away at some point.

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