Rian Johnson Talks Creative Freedom On 'Star Wars: The Last Jedi'

09/06/2017 11:23 am EDT

Despite Lucasfilm's seemingly frequent clashes with its Star Wars directors, the director of Star Wars: The Last Jedi couldn't be happier with his experience working on the film.

Rian Johnson says the ways many fans think that Lucasfilm structures the Star Wars films are all wrong.

"The perception of these films is that they're all planned out on a secret sheet of paper in advance, but that's just not the case," Johnson tells Empire magazine. "I wasn't given an outline of where it goes or even a list of things to hit. It really was just, 'Okay, what's next?'"

As opposed to chafing against the confines of working on the Star Wars franchise, Johnson's concerns ran in the opposite direction.

"I was terrified coming into this that I was gonna be like Barton Fink and have a script that was due six months ago and I'm still on page three writing about fishmongers," he says. "But it's the most fun I've ever had writing something. The whole experience was incredible: just tapping into my ten-year-old self. Even though it's Star Wars, the whole thing has felt bizarrely similar to my experience making Looper or Brick or The Brothers Bloom."

That Johnson so enjoyed his time working on The Last Jedi may be good news for Star Wars fans to hear since he is rumored to be a frontrunner to replace Colin Trevorrow as the director of Star Wars: Episode IX.

It was announced yesterday that Trevorrow was off of Episode IX supposedly after clashing with Lucasfilm over script re-writes. Trevorrow is the third in a series of director departures from Star Wars movies following Phil Lord and Chris Miller leaving the Han Solo standalone movie and Josh Trank exiting an unrevealed Star Wars Story project.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi currently has a 4.06 out of 5 ComicBook.com User Anticipation rating, making it the most anticipated upcoming movie not based on a comic book among ComicBook.com users and the sixth most anticipated overall. Let us know how much you're looking forward to Star Wars: The Last Jedi by giving the film your own personal ComicBook.com User Anticipation Rating below.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi will open in theaters on Dec. 15, 2017.

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