Rian Johnson took to X on Friday night to shut down a claim from former Lucasfilm boss Kathleen Kennedy that he was “spooked by the online negativity” and never returned to the “Star Wars” franchise after helming “The Last Jedi.”
In response to a post from IGN aggregating the news, he wrote, “Lol zero spooked, sorry.”
After 2017’s “The Last Jedi,” Johnson was set to develop another “Star Wars” trilogy. However, the project never got off the ground, and he instead shifted his focus to starting the “Knives Out” franchise.
In her exit interview with Deadline, Kennedy shared her side of the story on why Johnson never returned. While she did acknowledge that “Knives Out” ate up “a huge amount of his time,” she also claimed he got “a little scared” by the fan backlash to “The Last Jedi” and decided to step away from the project.
“I do believe he got spooked by the online negativity,” Kennedy said. “I think Rian made one of the best ‘Star Wars’ movies. He’s a brilliant filmmaker and he got spooked. This is the rough part. When people come into this space, I have every filmmaker and actors say to me, ‘What’s going to happen?’ They’re a little scared.”
Sitting down with Rolling Stone last summer, Johnson said the trilogy never made it deep into development and was “all very conceptual.” He explained that before any real progress could be made, “’Knives Out’ happened” and the “Star Wars” project fizzled out.
“Nothing really happened with it,” Johnson said. “We had a great time working together, and they said, ‘Let’s keep doing it.’ I said, ‘Great!’ I would kick ideas around with Kathy. The short version is ‘Knives Out’ happened. I went off and made ‘Knives Out,’ and was off to the races, busy making murder mysteries. It’s the sort of thing if, down the line, there’s an opportunity to do it, or do something else in ‘Star Wars,’ I would be thrilled. But right now I’m just doing my own stuff, and pretty happy.”
