Star Wars: The Last Jedi Director Rian Johnson Confirms He’s Still in Talks for More Star Wars Movies

Star Wars: The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson is still in talks with Lucasfilm to return for more. There have been no updates on Johnson’s next project in the galaxy far, far away, a proposed standalone trilogy if reports are to be believed. When the trilogy Game of Thrones creators DB Weiss and David Benioff was dated, some wondered if that was bad news for Johnson’s trilogy. Weiss and Benioff dropping out of Star Wars then led to more speculation about Johnson’s films. Speaking to Deadline, Johnson had no new updates to reveal at this time, but that talks are still ongoing. “We’re still engaged with Lucasfilm and we’ll wait and see,” Johnson said. “No updates on it at this moment, but yeah.”

Some may wonder why Johnson would want to return after some of the more extreme reactions to The Last Jedi. He says he worked all of that out of his system by directing Knives Out. “Anyone who’s on Twitter these days, God bless you because it’s rough waters out there, but there’s also wonderful stuff about it,” Johnson said. “That’s why we’re all still on it I guess. That’s one of the things [Knives Out] engages with, the current state of online culture. Whether you made a Star Wars movie or you have a cooking show, whatever you’re doing on there, someone’s going to be screaming at you about it probably. Let’s put it on a screen in a way we can all maybe have a laugh about it.”

Weiss and Benioff dropped out of their Star Wars trilogy due to scheduling issues. Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy made clear that the door is open for Weiss and Benioff to step through whenever the time is right. “David Benioff and Dan Weiss are incredible storytellers,” Kennedy said. “We hope to include them in the journey forward when they are able to step away from their busy schedule to focus on Star Wars.”

Weiss and Benioff showed a similar hope that they’d work in the Star Wars universe someday in their statement. “We love Star Wars. When George Lucas built it, he built us too,” they said. “Getting to talk about Star Wars with him and the current Star Wars team was the thrill of a lifetime, and we will always be indebted to the saga that changed everything. But there are only so many hours in the day, and we felt we could not do justice to both Star Wars and our Netflix projects. So we are stepping away.”

Weiss and Benioff in August signed a five-year, $250 million deal with Netflix. The deal seemed odd at the time. Weiss and Benioff’s commitment to three Star Wars movies could have kept them from completing any new television projects for up to a decade.

Weiss and Benioff were developing a trilogy of Star Wars films. The first of those films would have released in December 2022, a few years after The Rise of Skywalker concludes the Skywalker saga. It is not currently clear whether other Star Wars films will take up those spots on Disney’s schedule.

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker opens in theaters on December 20th. Star Wars is also headed to the Disney+ streaming service. The series The Mandalorian will debut on Disney+’s launch day, November 12th. A show following Obi-Wan Kenobi is in the works, with Ewan MacGregor returning to the role. A series about Rogue One‘s Cassian Andor is also in development.