After years of rumours that famed director Guillermo Del Toro worked on a mysterious Star Wars project, the writer behind The Dark Knight trilogy, David S. Goyer, has confirmed that the duo worked on an unproduced Star Wars movie.
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David S. Goyer, likely best known for co-writing Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight trilogy, and who wrote well known films such as the Blade trilogy, Dark City, and Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice, has revealed on an episode of the Happy Sad Confused podcast that he wrote an unproduced Star Wars movie with acclaimed film director, Guillermo Del Toro, with Del Toro confirming the revelation on X. I’m sure pretty much everybody reading this article knows of the work of Del Toro, but if not, he most recently released his academy award winning, Pinocchio, on Netflix last year. In addition to Pinocchio, Del Toro also won academy awards for The Shape of Water which released in 2017. Del Toro also directed high profile films including Blade II, Hellboy, Pan’s Labyrinth and Pacific Rim. You can read the quote from Goyer below.
“I wrote an unproduced Star Wars movie that Guillermo Del Toro was going to direct. It was about four years ago. I also have a scriptment for the origins of the Jedi also for Star Wars that I wrote for them [Lucasfilm] that took place twenty five thousand years before the first Star Wars film. That would’ve been…I got to do the Vader Immortal thing, but dabbling in Star Wars would’ve been fun for me.” – David S. Goyer via Happy Sad Confused
It’s unsurprising that Del Toro was involved with a Star Wars flick, it’s been rumoured for years, and Del Toro in 2017 even confirmed that he had spoken with Lucasfilm president, Kathleen Kennedy, regarding his ideas. One of those ideas he let slip in 2015 in an interview with Yahoo! Movies, where he told the outlet that he had an idea for a Star Wars anthology movie that would focus on Jabba the Hutt, with the crime-boss enduring a ‘Godfather’ saga to gain control on Tatooine.
In 2018, MakingStarWars reported details on a mysterious Star Wars movie which was in early development at Pinewood Studios, London, which was unfortunately scrapped due to the commercial failure of Solo: A Star Wars Story and Lucasfilm cancelling plans for future A Star Wars Story movies including ones focusing on Obi-Wan Kenobi and Boba Fett. The movie mentioned by MSW would be set on Mos Eisley, with a large focus on the movie being the spaceport that Luke Skywalker ventured to in A New Hope. In the years that followed, MakingStarWars shared on various podcasts that he believed that the film was set to be directed by Guillermo Del Toro. I reached out to MSW today who reaffirmed that tidbit and added that he believed Alden Ehrenreich’s Han Solo was to be featured, with the end of Solo acting as a tease for the Mos Eisley set film.
Following Goyer’s reveal on Happy Sad Confused, Del Toro took to X to confirm the words of Goyer and teased what his unproduced Star Wars film was about. The director said, “Can’t say much. Maybe two letters, “J” and “BB”. Is that three letters?”. Given the post and tease within in, it appears that Del Toro was at some point going to produce the Jabba the Hutt movie he spoke of in 2015 and with the past report from MakingStarWars, the film would’ve been set on Tatooine with a focus on the Mos Eisley space port, a location likely greatly important for a character trying to seize gain control on Tatooine.
When Goyer was asked why the film was not produced, he simply told Happy Sad Confused that there was a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes of Lucasfilm at that time. That ‘stuff’ was likely the reshuffling of Lucasfilm’s plans which included other A Star Wars Story films following the commercial failure that was Solo. James Mangold, director of Logan and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, confirmed earlier this year that he was writing a Boba Fett film for Lucasfilm a handful of years ago, but that the project was scrapped following the performance of Solo. You can read Goyer’s quote below.
“It was just a lot of behind the scenes stuff going on at Lucasfilm at the time. But it’s a cool script. Have you had Guillermo on the show? You’ll have to ask him about that the next time he’s on. It’s a cool script. There’s a lot of cool artwork from it that was produced.” – David S. Goyer via Happy Sad Confused
It’s a shame that we never got to see the Del Toro-Goyer project, but I hope someday a version of it comes to life. Goyer mentioned an origins of the Jedi movie that he submitted a ‘scriptment’ for years ago, and we know that James Mangold is currently onboard to write and direct a movie with the same premise. So perhaps there’s hope for this Jabba the Hutt, spaceport centric film.
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