Damon Lindelof is opening up about his experience on a “Star Wars” project he was working on with writer Justin Britt-Gibson, telling Esquire (in an “Explain This” video that you can watch above) that “I was in more than talks to join the ‘Star Wars’ universe. I joined the ‘Star Wars’ universe and was asked to leave.” Ouch.
Still, Lindelof admits that he would still be up for tackling a story set in a galaxy far, far away. “Will I get back in line outside the club and try to get back in again? Absolutely,” Lindelof says in the video posted Friday. “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.”
The project that Lindelof and Britt-Gibson were writing is the untitled movie announced at Star Wars Celebration earlier this month, to be directed by Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, a documentarian who had helmed episodes of Disney+ and Marvel Studios’ “Ms. Marvel.” During that announcement, it was revealed that Daisy Ridley would return to play Rey, the young Jedi introduced in “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” the first film in the so-called sequel trilogy (directed by Lindelof’s friend and frequent collaborator J.J. Abrams). The project is now being written by “Peaky Blinders” creator Steven Knight.
News broke of Lindelof and Britt-Gibson’s script last fall, and before this year’s Star Wars Celebration, news emerged that Lindelof and Britt-Gibson were off the project. From what we had heard, there was a question of how canonical the new movie would be. Lindelof is, after all, the writer who moved “Prometheus” away from being a straightforward “Alien” prequel story into something considerably weirder and more afield of the longstanding mythology. Apparently those discussions got to the point when Lindelof and Britt-Gibson were removed from the project entirely. It’s a shame. “Star Wars” could stand to be weirder.
Lindelof’s brilliant and bizarre new series “Mrs. Davis” just premiered on Peacock.
