The world of upcoming Star Wars movies and TV shows is always changing, and that’s both a good and a bad thing on a case-by-case basis. One moment you’ve got a hit series like Ahsoka making fans absolutely giddy with delight, and the next you’re bumming people out by revealing a project Guillermo del Toro would have directed that never saw the light of day. That last scenario was revealed to be true by The Dark Knight writer David S. Goyer, and now I’m gonna need a moment to process this loss.
As he sat down with Josh Horowitz on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Goyer revealed that he wrote two unproduced Star Wars projects that could have been amazing. In the case of the del Toro project, the Foundation showrunner noted that he’d written it about four years ago, and there’s “a lot of cool artwork” that came out of it. Here’s a clip from that appearance, with some extra teases from Guillermo himself to fuel the fire in the retweet:
True. Can’t say much. Maybe two letters “J” and “BB” is that three letters? https://t.co/qpGaSD3y7FSeptember 21, 2023
You know something, I lied. It’s not going to take “a moment” to process this, as details such as these are too good to let go. Especially when there’s a possibility that those letters revealed by Guillermo del Toro’s tweet could be seen as a reference to his pitch for a Jabba the Hutt movie. Unless the letters “J” and “BB” are supposed to indicate a multiversal Jar-Jar Binks variant, with an extra B in his name.
The timing lines up with remarks del Toro made on the project in 2017, which is more than I can say for the edges of my now broken heart. Seriously, this is a Star Wars cancellation that sits up there with ditching the gorgeous-looking video game Star Wars1313, as well as the news that Patty Jenkins’ Rogue Squadron project was removed from the 2023 movie schedule.
The turmoil that David S. Goyer alluded to in his interview seems to be more connected to that second project’s fate. This mysterious script sounds like it may have been lost during the Lucasfilm shake-ups in the wake of Star Wars: The Last Jedi’s 2017 release. This, of course, led to Colin Trevorrow’s “traumatic” departure from what was supposed to be the original concept for Episode IX.
At this point, I know it’s crazy to hope that Guillermo del Toro and David S. Goyer’s project will be resurrected. So for the most part, I’ll limit my hopes to the arrival of the day when that cool artwork and the script that inspired it potentially meet the eyes of the public in raw form.
But then again, if Donald Glover’s Lando can find new life as a movie, then maybe those hopes aren’t living in a galaxy far, far away. If you want to revel in the world of the Star Wars universe that does exist, you can use your Disney+ subscription to enjoy tales of droids, Jedi, and even the Hutts.