While many fans were thrilled with yesterday’s news that Lucasfilm had hired Game of Thrones duo David Benioff and D.B. Weiss to develop a new series of Star Wars movies, just as many were frustrated by it. Despite employing several women in key creative and executive roles, the studio, under president Kathleen Kennedy, has yet to hire a single woman or person of color to direct a Star Wars movie. Not one. According to a wacky new rumor, that’s not exactly true.
Is it Star Wars? Could it be Star Wars? Is Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy finally hiring a woman to direct a friggin’ Star War?! To be honest, we have no idea, but Reed Morano — director and executive producer of The Handmaid’s Tale — is coyly teasing a potential project at Lucasfilm. And no, she can’t tell you what it is (yet).
The notion of Taika Waititi bringing his delightful sensibilities to another major franchise — or any form of media, really — is certainly attractive. After reinvigorating the Thor series with the outlandishly entertaining and colorful (in more ways than one) Ragnarok, Waititi likely has his pick of projects to take on next, though many fans of the filmmaker would probably rather see him deliver another original feature. But if Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy had it her way, Waititi would sign on to direct a Star Wars movie.
With the current Star Wars trilogy set to conclude in 2019, some fans have already begun wondering what’s next for the prolific franchise. Lucasfilm has a few spinoffs in the works, including an Obi-Wan Kenobi movie (possibly with Ewan McGregor) and the upcoming Solo (which recently wrapped production), but the future of the core series hasn’t exactly been at the forefront of public discussion — until now.
Well, that was unexpected. Lucasfilm has just announced that Phil Lord and Christopher Miller are no longer at the helm of Star Wars’ Han Solo spinoff movie, due to, you guessed it, that perennial Hollywood scourge: creative differences.
The Star Wars saga might end with Episode IX, coming out in 2019, but Lucasfilm has already been hard at work expanding the universe and planning for more Star Wars and Star Wars-adjacent movies far, far into the future. We’ve already gotten Rogue One, which occurred, chronologically, somewhere between the prequels and the original trilogy, and focused on a group of small characters who turned the tide of the war whose names we might never had known. Then, we’ll get the Han Solo spinoff, something of a prequel in its own right, in summer 2018. But what’s next after that? Kathleen Kennedy says we’ll know in about a month.
A couple weeks ago, when Disney CEO Bob Iger said that the Han Solo spinoff was going to be about “How Han got his name,” the internet, understandably, went a little wobbly. Is Han Solo not Han Solo’s name?? What was his name before he was Han Solo?? What does it all MEAN??? Well, we can all relax now, because what looked like a mysterious plot detail was actually just a poorly-chosen turn of phrase.