Guillermo del Toro Almost Made a Jabba the Hutt Movie

Add this to the pile of legendary what if projects in Hollywood history: Guillermo del Toro confirmed that at some point in the last few years he was working on a Star Wars movie. That revelation was first teased by del Toro’s collaborator David S. Goyer a few weeks ago, during an appearance on the Happy Sad Confused podcast.

At that time, Goyer would only say that he was working on something in the Star Wars realm with del Toro, who later tweeted a response that read “True. Can’t say much. Maybe two letters “J” and “BB” is that three letters?

During a recent Collider event (via The Hollywood Reporter) del Toro confirmed that the film ws actually about “the rise and fall of Jabba the Hutt,” the slug-like warlord who debuted in Return of the Jedi and has become one the franchise’s signature antagonists.

We were doing a lot of stuff,” del Toro said, “and then it’s not my property, it’s not my money, and then it’s one of those 30 screenplays that goes away. Sometimes I’m bitter, sometimes I’m not. I always turn to my team and say, ‘Good practice, guys. Good practice. We designed a great world. We designed great stuff. We learned.’”

Lucasfilm

Del Toro did not discuss the details of why the film was never made, but the recent history of Star Wars is filled with projects that were developed but never completed for one reason or another. Just ask Rian Johnson or Patty Jenkins, or the Game of Thrones guys. At this point, it’s starting to feel like you could program a pretty amazing film festival just based around the work of people who started Star Wars projects but never got to finish their work.

Despite the fact that this Jabba movie never saw the light of day, del Toro said he “never ungrateful” about projects like this. “I trust the universe,” he said. “When something doesn’t happen, I go, ‘Why?’ I try to have a dialogue with myself. ‘Why didn’t it happen?’ And the more you swim upstream with the universe, the less you’re gonna realize where you’re going.”