Screenwriter Damon Lindelof has given new insight into his canceled Star Wars movie, revealing that it would have explored the battle between nostalgia and reinvention. Lindelof, known for creating the television show Lost, was hired by Lucasfilm to write a New Jedi Order movie. This film would have seen Daisy Ridley reprise her role as Rey Skywalker in a post-The Rise of Skywalker setting. However, Lindelof left the project in 2023 and the movie has not been heard from since.
In an interview with The Ringer-Verse, Lindelof discussed what he was aiming to achieve with his Star Wars movie, and why it ultimately did not come to fruition. He described the film as a battle between the “Force of nostalgia” and the “Force of revision,” which he compared to “the Protestant Reformation inside Star Wars.”
“I was fired from a Star Wars movie,” Lindelof began. “They asked me, ‘What do you think a Star Wars movie should be?’ I said, ‘Here’s what it should be.’ They said, ‘Great, you’re hired.’ And then two years later, I was fired. So I was wrong. At least through that prism. But what we were attempting to do – my partners Justin Britt-Gibson and Rayna McClendon and I – what we were attempting to do was to have this conversation in the movie, which is to say, there is a Force of nostalgia and there is a Force of revision, and they are at odds with one another. And let’s do the Protestant Reformation inside Star Wars. And it didn’t work.”
“Just to talk about the Bantha in the room, you have your cake and eat it too. But the conversation that the fandom is having, without winking and looking at the audience, and that didn’t feel necessarily that risky.”
Lindelof, who is also the creator, writer, and executive producer of the upcoming DC Studios TV show Lanterns, admitted that there was more to his exit from Lucasfilm. He pointed to writing struggles that couldn’t be resolved.
“It was just, the writing was really hard. It was slow. The tone, getting it right, where it was inside of the canon, what its relationship was to Episode 9. Is it starting a new trilogy? All of those things, they’re so massive. They’re so big.”
“Getting the center of Star Wars right is like steering a tanker. You turn the wheel and it takes five minutes before it turns a little bit like this. When Episode 7 came out, we all knew what it was. It was Rey and it was Finn and it was Poe, and then we were migrating back in Luke and Leia and Han and Chewy and all those guys. But we got the sense that when this new trilogy was over we were going to be launching with these new characters and that was the center of Star Wars. The new question is, are Mando and Grogu the center of Star Wars now?”
This is a nod to The Mandalorian and Grogu, the first new Star Wars movie since 2019’s divisive Rise of Skywalker. As reported by IGN, The Mandalorian and Grogu enters theaters under intense box office scrutiny, but Lucasfilm reportedly believes next year’s Star Wars: Starfighter has a better chance of reviving the franchise.
IGN’s review of The Mandalorian and Grogu returned a 5/10. “If you’re looking for a Star Wars movie that thrills, surprises, challenges, or demonstrates a vested interest in seeing its characters grow and change. The Mandalorian and Grogu is not the way.”
There are a number of big picture questions about the future of Star Wars. While Ahsoka Season 2 is confirmed to be in the works for Disney+, there remains a great deal of uncertainty about other movies and shows Lucasfilm announced before Kathleen Kennedy stepped down as boss of the company. Kennedy made no mention of the previously-announced standalone movie set to feature Rey Skywalker during interviews earlier this year.
The project, revealed by Kennedy with fanfare three years ago at Star Wars Celebration 2023, is planned to feature the return of Daisy Ridley as Rey Skywalker, and reveal how the character founds a new era of the Jedi Order. Kennedy announced the project on-stage alongside Ridley and director Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, who was confirmed to be helming the project. But in the years since – as with so many other Star Wars movies – little more has been said.
Discussing the standalone Rey movie’s plot in more detail, Kennedy described it as set 15 years after Rise of Skywalker. “We’re post-war, post-First Order, and the Jedi are in disarray, and there’s a lot of discussion around who are the Jedi, what are they doing, what’s the state of the galaxy? Rey is attempting to rebuild the Jedi Order based on the books, based on what she promised Luke.”
Of course, this isn’t the only project expected to feature Rey in the future. Lucasfilm is also incubating a new trilogy of movies from Simon Kinberg, the director behind the widely-panned X-Men movie Dark Phoenix and 2022 spy action flop The 355. The Hollywood Reporter suggested in late 2024 that Rey’s future had subsequently become a matter of debate within Lucasfilm, as multiple projects from different directors sought to make use of the character. And while Kinberg’s trilogy was then earlier in development, it was noted that Obaid-Chinoy’s standalone movie had suffered setbacks, including the departure of writer Steven Knight.
But with Dave Filoni now in charge of Lucasfilm, everything we thought we knew about future Star Wars projects may now be wrong.
