Screenwriter Damon Lindelof recently spoke to Variety about the Star Wars movie he was once slated to write, which he called “a true labor of love.”
“The movie is still happening, but unfortunately not with me,” Lindelof said at the premiere of his new show Mrs. Davis. “I wish them all the best of luck. Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy is an incredible director, and I can’t wait to see what she comes up with.”
We now know that the movie Lindelof was penning will follow Daisy Ridley’s character Rey and take place 15 years after the conclusion of the Star Wars sequel trilogy. The film was officially announced at the Star Wars Celebration the other week alongside a slew of other projects. Instead of Lindelof and Justin Britt-Gibson, Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight is now handling writing duties with Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy directing. Obaid-Chinoy recently helmed the Ms. Marvel TV show for the MCU.
Damon Lindelof’s Star Wars movie was “a true labor of love”
Lindelof’s departure was reported back in March. His subsequent comments to Slashfilm were not encouraging. In fact, it sounded like he was questioning everything Disney was doing with the Star Wars universe.
“I will just say, that for reasons that I can’t get into on this Sunday morning, on this day, the degree of difficulty is extremely, extremely, extremely high,” Lindelof said about making a Star Wars movie at this moment in time. “If it can’t be great, it shouldn’t exist. That’s all I’ll say, because I have the same association with it as you do, which is, it’s the first movie I saw sitting in my dad’s lap, four years old, May of ’77. I think it’s possible that sometimes when you hold something in such high reverence and esteem, you start to get in the kitchen and you just go, ‘Maybe I shouldn’t be cooking. Maybe I should just be eating.’ We’ll just leave it at that point.”
Lindelof is no stranger to science fiction; he was one of the main showrunners on Lost, a writer for Ridley Scott’s Prometheus and he created the Watchmen limited series for HBO. He has spoken a lot about his love for the Star Wars universe, but it sounds like he had a bad experience while he was working on this film.
In any case, the film will supposedly move forward with its new writer and we will see how Rey goes about rebuilding the Jedi Order.
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