Yet another blow is encountered for Star Wars’ cinematic hopes as Damon Lindelof appears to have walked away from the film he was writing.
“The more you tighten your grip, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.”
That of course, was the legendary Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia Organa, spouting one of the many iconic lines from 1977’s Star Wars. Forget getting iconic lines from newer Star Wars movies, we don’t even get newer Star Wars movies anymore, with reports emerging today to suggest that the latest attempt to get A Galaxy Far, Far Away has indeed hit the rocks.
We covered a story a couple of days ago where Damon Lindelof, writer and the man leading the writing process on Lucasfilm’s latest attempt to get a Star Wars movie into gear, publicly expressed a fair amount of dissatisfaction with the process. That set the alarm bells ringing about Lindelof’s future with Lucasfilm, yet it appears that the partnership between writer and studio was permanently severed weeks ago.
Above The Line is reporting that Lindelof and co-writer Britt-Gibson turned in a draft of the script in mid-February and parted ways with the project just days later.’
Lindelof described the process a couple of days ago stating ‘the degree of difficulty is extremely, extremely, extremely high.’ Yet again, it looks like the high levels of creative control that Lucasfilm is demanding its creators cede up is allowing those talented people to yep, slip through their fingers like so many star systems.
The list of promising filmmakers that have exited Lucasfilm is almost too long to list but stretches back years, includes promising projects that have been scrapped from filmmakers like Patty Jenkins to Phil Lord and Chris Miller’s scrapped version of Solo. Now, the studio once again finds itself in a rather tricky position of needing to announce a film at Star Wars Celebration next month that is clearly in a bit of a mess. The project is still set to be directed by Ms Marvel's Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy with an unnamed new writer now working on it.
This is a far from ideal scenario for Lucasfilm, who will be keen to use next month’s fan convention to show that after three years of cinematic exile, it at the very least has some kind of plan for Star Wars on the big screen.
However, the studio is now in the unenviable position of having to announce a film which everybody knows is in a sticky spot.
We’re watching this one unfold from between our fingers but we’ll update you as we hear more.
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