Back in 2013, Guillermo del Toro revealed that Lucasfilm had approached him about directing the new entry in the Star Wars franchise (which turned out to be Star Wars: The Force Awakens), but he had to pass on it because he was too busy working on other projects. Four years later, he confirmed there had been further talks about him doing something in the Star Wars universe. Now, during an interview on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, screenwriter David Goyer (who worked with del Toro on Blade II) said that he and del Toro had been collaborating on a Star Wars project, but it ended up being shelved. Like several other Star Wars projects have been in recent years.
Goyer said (with thanks to IndieWire for the transcription), “I wrote an unproduced Star Wars movie that Guillermo del Toro was going to direct. That was about four years ago. There was just a lot of behind stuff going on at Lucasfilm at the time but it’s a cool script. There’s a lot of cool artwork from it that was produced.“
That’s not the only time Goyer has missed out on a Star Wars movie, as he also has “a script treatment for an origins of the Jedi movie for Star Wars that I wrote for them that took place 25,000 years before the first Star Wars film. I got to do the Vader Immortal VR thing, but dabbling in Star Wars would have been fun for me.”
Logan and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny director James Mangold is now developing a Star Wars movie that is said to be about “the origins of the Jedi”, so that probably knocks Goyer’s treatment out of contention for good. If the Mangold project manages to make it into production, anyway.
It looks like Guillermo del Toro won’t be going to a galaxy far, far away, but he always has multiple projects in development, so we can rest assured that he’s already extremely busy working on other things. Next up for him are a stop-motion adaptation of the Kazuo Ishiguro novel The Buried Giant and a live-action adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein that’s expected to star Oscar Isaac, Andrew Garfield, and Mia Goth.
Are you disappointed to hear that del Toro and Goyer were planning a Star Wars movie, but it got shelved? Share your thoughts on this one by leaving a comment below.
