Tag Archives: Rian Johnson

While Rian Johnson still insists his Star Wars trilogy is happening he meanwhile in the real world just signed a deal with Netflix for two Knives Out sequels, worth a whopping $450 million. The first Knives Out movie had a very modest $40 million budget and became a surprise hit and extremely profitable as well when it grossed more than $300 million at the global box office.
While this is not directly related to Star Wars fans of The Last Jedi and Johnson’s potential Star Wars trilogy will certainly be disappointed that despite reassurances by Johnson his actual future plans seem to include a lot of things, just not Star Wars. So good luck to Rian Johnson and his future Knives Out movies! Filming for the first sequel begins in June in Greece. Daniel Craig will reprise his role from the first movie.
One final note: I hope the $450 million deal includes the production budget for the movies and marketing. Or else Rian Johnson can buy his own island now. I hear Skellig Michael is a nice place to live where you can enjoy the local fauna and flora undisturbed.

He will subvert your expectations on Netflix now

The Rise of Skywalker was nominated for three Academy Awards! Click through for all the details!

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Even though this is in no way related to Star Wars, it may still be of interest to some Star Wars fans how Rian Johnson’s new movie “Knives Out” is doing at the box office. According to estimates by Box Office Mojo, “Knives Out” will have a $27 million opening weekend. Which makes “Knives Out” the Rian Johnson movie with the best opening weekend (other than “The Last Jedi”).
“Looper” made $20 million in 2012 and the previous two movies “Brothers Bloom” and “Brick” never had a wide release. If we look at ticket sales it’s about $2.6 million tickets in 2012 for “Looper” vs. $2.9 million tickets in 2019 for “Knives Out”. “Knives Out” will probably make more money than “Looper” in the US, however, “Looper” made most of its money overseas, $176 million in total. “Knives Out” is currently at $70 million worldwide, but there are no box office reports from most territories yet.

Fun fact: “Knives Out” had a better opening in China with $13.5 million than “Solo”, which only made $9.5 million.

The cast of Knives Out

BANG Showbiz posted a short inteview clip with Rian Johnson on their Twitter page. In the interview he says he’s excited to be a Star Wars fan again and he’s looking forward to seeing the new movie in December. But then BANG Showbiz asks the big question, what about Rian Johnson’s own new trilogy? This is what he has to say about that:

“Well we’ll see, I mean I’m still talking to Lucasfilm, they’re figuring out what they’re doing, and we’ll see what happens, but you know I’d be thrilled if it happens but I’m doing my own stuff too.”

This doesn’t sound too confident. It seems plans at Lucasfilm are still shifting. We also don’t know how exactly Kevin Feige’s Star Wars project will fit in. Would Lucasfilm have three different Star Wars movie projects at the same time? Benioff & Weiss, Rian Johnson and whatever Kevin Feige is developing? But as usual things can change. It’s certainly interesting to learn that “Lucasfilm is figuring out what they’re doing”. Let’s hope they’ll figure it out very soon. We still know very little about what kind of movie we’ll get in 2022 and what will happen beyond.

Click the image below to watch the short interview clip with Rian Johnson! And leave your own – constructive – thoughts in the comments! What do you think Lucasfilm will do?

Click to go to the video

The Hollywood Reporter has an article about the new deal between Netflix and the former Game of Thrones showrunners Benioff & Weiss. According to Hollywood Reporter sources Netflix is not worried about Benioff & Weiss’ Star Wars schedule. The Hollywood Reporter goes on and says that according to their sources, all that Benioff & Weiss will do for Star Wars is to write a treatment and to write the script for at least one movie. They were originally supposed to write all three scripts for the new trilogy, so according to whatever sources Hollywood Reporter has, something seems to have changed here.
How involved will Benioff & Weiss be with Star Wars? Will Lucasfilm once more have different teams write the scripts for the follow-up trilogy? In other news it seems Rian Johnson still thinks he will work on Star Wars after Knives Out, so maybe Lucasfim will have Johnson write and direct whatever movie comes after the 2022 release of the Benioff & Weiss’ penned movie? Perhaps D23 will tell us more.
Anyway, it is very likely that Benioff & Weiss will not be involved with Star Wars for the next decade or so, the final movie of the new trilofy would likely be released in 2026. Netflix would certainly not pay them $250 million if they had other time consuming obligations that keep them from developing shows for the streaming service. And Netflix wouldn’t state they aren’t worried about their Star Wars schedule, if Benioff & Weiss would be deeply involved with Star Wars beyond 2022.

Read the Hollywood Reporter article here.

DB Weiss & David Benioff

Chris Avellone, one of the writers for the upcoming EA Star Wars Game Jedi: Fallen Order and former lead writer for KOTOR II, talked about returning to the Star Wars franchise after a long time and also shared his opinion on The Last Jedi in an interview with website VGC. Click through for the full story!

The face you make when your hero doesn’t meet expectations

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Ever since the new Star Wars movie release schedule was announced by Disney fans have been wondering whose movies we’re going to get: Rian Johnson’s or Benioff & Weiss’. ABC correspondent Clayton Sandell asked Lucasfilm just about that. And this is what he posted on Twitter:

We asked, but Lucasfilm is not yet saying if the new #StarWars films planned for 2022, 2024 and 2026 are part of the previously-announced Rian Johnson trilogy or the series from “Game of Thrones” producers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss.

In my opinion this can only mean one thing: Lucasfilm hasn’t decided yet. If everything was already set in motion they could have announced at least which name is attached to the movies. That they didn’t doesn’t necessarily mean that plans are going to change. But I wouldn’t be completely surprised that when we get the announcement neither Johnson nor Benioff & Weiss will make the movies. I suppose Celebration Anaheim in 2020 is the earliest we will learn more. Maybe there’s still hope we’ll get movies by Favreau and Filoni instead.

Despite ongoing speculation to the contrary Rian Johnson once more confirmed that he will return to Star Wars once he’s finished with all of the duties for his current movie “Knives Out”. Steve Weintraub of Collider mentions it in his tweet about Rian Johnson’s appearance at “CinemaCon”, where  Johnson talked about it.
So even if some fans would like for Rian Johnson to never return to the galaxy far, far away ever again, it seems we will definitely get two trilogies, one by Benioff & Weiss, another one by Rian Johnson. This also probably ends all speculation that Disney might give Star Wars a long(er) rest after Episode IX.

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A major Star Wars rumor is circulating on Twitter right now: Rian Johnson may have left Star Wars after all the negative reaction to The Last Jedi.

Website Superbromovies has a short article about Rian Johnson’s alleged departure from Star Wars. With no official announcement at all we can only speculate and wait for confirmation. Until then consider it a rumor. It may not be true after all. All we can say is that late last year, when Bob Iger talked about upcoming Star Wars movie projects, Iger only mentioned Benioff & Weiss and no word was said about Rian Johnson.

We’ll wait to see how this pans out before we’ll accept comments from our readers. Thanks for your patience on this.

UPDATE: Rian Johnson just posted on Twitter that the rumor is false and that he is still working on his Star Wars trilogy.

The Hollywood Reporter recently posted an article about a study that examined tweets directed at Rian Johnson, following the release of The Last Jedi. And the study finds that more than half of all the negative tweets are not by real fans but are either politically motivated by the alt-right or come from Russia in order to sow dissent. I did read the actual paper and if you click through I will provide some additional info.

The bane of Star Wars?

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Please take this with several grains of salt, but a rumor is circulating that Rian Johnson’s Star Wars trilogy may no longer be. Click through for the info that is available!

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Congratulations are in order for The Last Jedi, which won three Saturn Awards, an award that honors science fiction, fantasy and horror movies. Click through for the winners and further details!

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Before the Solo movie takes over and will dominate the headlines there is one more article about The Last Jedi. Rian Johnson was interviewed by Flickering Myth for the European disc release of The Last Jedi. And Rian Johnson made a remark about the fan reaction. If you want to know what he said, click through!

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When The Last Jedi was released one of the questions left unanswered by The Force Awakens was who exactly Rey’s parents were. And Rian Johnson’s movie gave an answer: they were filthy junk traders who sold Rey off for drinking money and they’re buried in a pauper’s grave on Jakku.

Ever since then fans have speculated if that was what JJ Abrams really had in mind when he set up the mystery, or if he had any solution to the mystery at all. Now, actor Simon Pegg was interviewed for a podcast and he shed some light on what JJ Abrams’ plan was. Click through to find out more.

Rey, sad about her parents

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The Last Jedi, despite being a commercial success, is considered by many as the most divisive Star Wars movie ever. You might think Disney and Lucasfilm and all the people involved with the movie would try their best to win back the hearts of the fans who were disappointed with the latest installment of the franchise, especially in light of the upcoming Solo: A Star Wars Story movie which needs to be a success. And now London based free daily newspaper Evening Standard published an interview with Rian Johnson. And he had a few things to say. Click through to find out what he said.

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Luke’s appearance on Crait is one of the touching moments of The Last Jedi. Luke gets a chance to say farewell to Leia. And then walks out to confront the First Order and Kylo Ren. But isn’t there something missing? Yes, there is. Click here to find out what is missing!

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British magazine Empire held its Empire Awards ceremony last Sunday. The winners for each category are voted by the readers of the magazine.
And even though it is believed by some that 50% of the fans hate The Last Jedi, at least the British readers of Empire Magazine thought differently and the movie won a couple of awards. Which ones? Click here to find out more!

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Website Filmschoolprojects has an article about the “The Last Jedi” making of documentary. In the documentary it is said that Russian Twitter bots actually started a #HuxLive campaign early on to make sure the character won’t be killed in the movie.
Director Rian Johnson is quoted as saying: “It’s amazing, there’s a coordinated effort by these Russian accounts. Hundreds of them.”

Is this the actual reason Hux survives The Last Jedi? I doubt it. Whatever, I wish those Russian Twitter bots had started a #LukeLive campaign instead.

Read the full story here.

General Hux. Happy to be alive.

Entertainment Weekly has an exclusive first look at five deleted scenes from Star Wars: The Last Jedi. In addition to descriptions of these deleted scenes, EW also asked Rian Johnson about the scenes in question. The most noteworthy scene that was discussed focused on Luke and Leia mourning the death of Han Solo. Click through to read about the deleted scenes and the comments from Johnson!

Daisy Ridley gave an interview to the French Magazine Le Geek in which she revealed that J.J. Abrams did indeed write story drafts for Episodes VIII and IX.
However, when Rian Johnson started writing the script for The Last Jedi he apparently chose to completely ignore the draft and started from scratch.

Here’s the direct quote from Ridley which was translated from French into English:

“Here’s what I think I know. J. J. wrote Episode VII, as well as drafts for VIII & IX. Then Rian Johnson arrived and wrote TLJ entirely. I believe there was some sort of general consensus on the main lines of the trilogy, but apart from that, every director writes and realizes his film in his own way. Rian Johnson and J. J. Abrams met to discuss all of this, although Episode VIII is still his very own work. I believe Rian didn’t keep anything from the first draft of Episode VIII.”

What are your thoughts? Would you have preferred Episode VIII which followed a draft written by Abrams? Of course, nothing is known about the draft. Maybe one day we’ll find out what could have been.

Read the full story at Star Wars News Net.

Yes, you read the headline correctly. ILM VFX Supervisor Mike Mullholland recently revealed that a change was made to the design of Kylo Ren’s TIE Silencer after Rian Johnson received an early prototype of the ship’s toy counterpart. Apparently, the original plan was to have the missiles on the underside of the ship but they were switched to the side of the wings since that’s where they were located on the toy version of the ship. So it appears a toy influenced a film in this case. Head over to io9 for the full story! 

Lucasfilm has announced that Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss will write and produce a new series of Star Wars films. This new series of films will be separate from both the episodic Skywalker films and the new trilogy that is being developed by Rian Johnson. Benioff and Weiss will begin working on the new series of films “as soon as the final season of Game of Thrones is complete.” Head over to StarWars.com to read the full statements from Kathleen Kennedy, Benioff, and Weiss. What are your thoughts regarding this latest announcement? Let us know!

Star Wars: The Last Jedi writer-director Rian Johnson responds to the hateful criticism leveled by fans against the film. It’s been quite a roller coaster ride for Johnson and The Last Jedi since its release December 15. The film had the momentum of overwhelming positive reviews from critics going in, which no doubt helped it score an impressive $220 million haul domestically in its opening frame. But while the film skyrocketed toward a $1 billion gross worldwide by New Year’s Eve, grumbling from fans quickly intensified, and some went so far as to create a petition to remove The Last Jedi from the Star Wars canon. ScreenRant has the full story. (more….)

Mark Hamill has revealed the original intended ending for The Force Awakens that Rian Johnson changed. Uh-oh, Mark. Maybe you should seal those lips of yours. Aren’t you in enough hot water with Disney’s legal team for bashing your onscreen character? All kidding aside, check out the article.

Business Insider interviewed Rian Johnson shortly after the release of The Last Jedi. During the interview, Johsnon addressed fan backlash, Luke Skywalker, the lack of Captian Phasma, and the brand new trilogy that he is developing. Johnson provides several interesting and thoughtful answers in this interview. Check it out!