The Rumored 2025 Star Wars Movie Has A New Writer...

To recap: rumors of Damon Lindelof (with Justin-Britt Gibson) writing a new Star Wars movie, with two times Academy Award winning documentary maker, and director of two Ms Marvel episodes, Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy said to helm the movie, appeared a few months ago. More details were added as time went on, such as who the lead actors are (chances are they are gone now, since they were attached to Lindelof, at least the male lead was attached to Lindelof), but then earlier this week it was reported that Lindelof and Britt-Gibson quit, but that Lucasfilm is still pursuing the project.

And now reputable trade magazine Variety revealed the name of the new writer attached to the project. It’s the guy who co-invented the game show “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire”. If you believe it or not. The writer, Steven Knight, also created the BBC hit series Peaky Blinders, which is distributed worldwide by Netflix. So what other things has Steven Knight done? Click through for a few more details!

UPDATE: Steven Knight will be quite busy apparently, since the trades report that he is supposed to write the completely unnecessary and pointless Vertigo remake (Hollywood really needs to think long and hard about what they are doing), with Robert Downey Jr as (executive) producer and maybe even starring.

“Who Wants To Be A Writer For Lucasfilm” would be a great idea for a new game show, but with a twist, the loser gets the job and the winner is let off the hook!

So who is this Steven Knight?

As mentioned, he is one of three people credited with inventing the game show “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire”, he also created and wrote popular and much acclaimed period piece “Peaky Blinders” about a gang of criminals in early 1900s England.

Knight has also written several movies. Here are a few of them:

Dirty Pretty Things (2002), 7.7 on IMDB, box office $14 million: a movie about irregular African immigrants in the UK stumbling upon a murder plot

Amazing Grace (2007), 7.4 on IMDB, box office $32 million: a movie about a British politician seeking to end the British transatlantic slave trade (Britain abolished slave trade and slavery in 1807, with the last slaves being actually freed in 1837)

Hummingbird aka Redemption (2013), 6.2 on IMDB, box office $12 million: Jason Statham movie about an ex soldier who assumes a new identity and becomes part of the London underworld

Locke (2014), 7.1 on IMDB, box office $5 million: that utterly idiosyncratic Tom Hardy movie with him being the only actor in the movie and featuring him driving a car while talking on the phone to his boss, his wife, his lover who is expecting a child from him, giving pre-mature birth and ending with Tom Hardy getting fired from his job, dumped by his wife, having visions of his dead father and holding imaginary conversations with him, among other things

Seventh Son (2015), 5.5 on IMDB, box office $114 million: that movie where Jeff Bridges recruits the seventh son of a seventh son, trains him to be a wizard and uses magic to defeat some evil witch

The Girl In The Spider’s Web, 6.1 on IMDB, box office $35 million: the movie is set in the Stieg Larsson “Millennium” book series continuity, but based on a book written by another author after the original author died, featuring hacker Lisbeth Salander from the books as the main character. The movie was a financial flop and earned less than its production budget

Serenity (2019), 5.4 on IMDB, box office $14 million: Matthew McConaughey movie in which he finds out he is a character in a video game, not to be confused with Free Guy with Ryan Reynolds, because in Serenity McConaughey is a male prostitute, gets hired by Anne Hathaway who then offers him 10 million to kill her husband, but then McConaughey finds out he is in a video game, and the avatar of the game developer’s late father, with Hathaway being the avatar of the mother who remarried in real life, with the new step dad being an abusive idiot, so the son wrote the video game as some kind of stress relief or therapy. It’s as crazy as it sounds

Spencer (2021), 6.6 on IMDB, box office $25 million: that Kristen Stewart movie in which she plays Princess Diana who decides to end her marriage with then Prince Charles of Wales

Looking at Knight’s resume you can tell that he has a huge variety of themes, with some preference for movies or shows set in the criminal underworld. But none of his movies were financially all that much successful. Knight is certainly highly original and thinks outside the box though and he takes risks. So he certainly has the skills to come up with something unique for Star Wars. But if he can write an actual crowdpleaser is an entirely different matter, so far all of his movies have been either not very successful, highly idiosyncratic or niche. Or all of the above.

Then again, this is Lucasfilm, so let’s count the days before some trade magazine will probably announce Steven Knight’s departure from the movie. Rumors say Lucasfilm may officially announce the project at Celebration in April.

What are your thoughts here? Would you have ever believed that the co-creator of “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire” will be tasked with writing a Star Wars movie? But to make it clear, Steven Knight is a proper writer who has enjoyed constant employment, wrote several movies and tv episodes and created one extremely popular and acclaimed series with Peaky Blinders. But his co-creator credit for “Who Wants To Be  A Millionaire” is certainly the most fun and odd thing to talk about. Let’s wish him good luck! He will certainly need it.

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