‘Pacific Rim’ Director Guillermo Del Toro Confirms Lucasfilm Passed On Him Directing A David Goyer Written Star Wars Film
John F. Trent
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Pacific Rim director Guillermo del Toro recently confirmed that The Walt Disney Company and Lucasfilm passed on him directing a Star Wars film written by David Goyer.
PINOCCHIO (Pictured) GUILLERMO DEL TORO. Cr. mandraketheblack.de/NETFLIX © 2020
Goyer recently informed YouTuber Josh Horowitz that Lucasfilm passed on a Star Wars film written by him that Del Toro was supposed to direct.
David Goyer wrote a STAR WARS movie to be directed by @RealGDT that we’ll never see?! I’m going to need a minute.
My full chat with David here: https://t.co/3qAJn5Zv5c pic.twitter.com/XcSHQA8pL0
— Josh Horowitz (@joshuahorowitz) September 21, 2023
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He said, “I wrote an unproduced Star Wars movie that Guillermo del Toro was going to direct. … That was about four years ago.
Goyer also revealed he wrote a Jedi origin script as well, “And then I also wrote an unproduced– I have a scriptment for an origins of the Jedi movie also for Star Wars that I wrote for them. It took place 25,000 years before the first Star Wars film.”
Goyer continued, “So that would have been… I got to do that Vader Immortal VR thing, but dabbling in Star Wars would have been fun for me.”
Darth Vader in Vader Immortal (2020), ILMxLAB
When asked why the del Toro movie was not greenlit, Goyer replied, “There was just a lot of [behind-the-scenes] stuff going over at Lucasfilm at the time. It’s a cool script.”
Goyer then informed Horowitz to ask him about the movie next time he has del Toro on the show.
Guillermo del Toro speaking at the 2013 WonderCon at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, California. Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Del Toro would confirm he was attached to the script writing on X, “True. Can’t say much. Maybe two letters ‘J’ and ‘BB’ is that three letters?”
Guillermo del Toro on X
As for what happened four years ago at Lucasfilm that might have stopped this movie from going forward, 2019 was the year that Lucasfilm released The Rise of Skywalker and the company made a pivot from theatrical releases to Disney+ with The Mandalorian.
In fact, Lucasfilm and The Walt Disney Company have not released a theatrical film since 2019, but have released numerous Disney+ shows including second and third seasons of The Mandalorian, The Book of Boba Fett, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Ahsoka, a seventh season of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, The Bad Batch, Star Wars Visions, and Tales of the Jedi.
(L-R): Ahsoka Tano (Rosario Dawson) and Hera Syndulla (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) in Lucasfilm’s STAR WARS: AHSOKA, exclusively on Disney+. ©2023 Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All Rights Reserved.
As for Goyer noting he wrote an origin of the Jedi film that idea sounds nearly identical to the James Mangold directed film that Kathleen Kennedy announced at Star Wars Celebration back in April.
A press release from Lucasfilm detailed, “James Mangold will take audiences deep into the past, telling the tale of the first Jedi to wield the Force and harness it as a liberating power in an era of chaos and oppression.”
James Mangold attends the UK Premiere of Lucasfilm’ “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” in Leicester Square on June 26, 2023 in London, UK. (Photo by StillMoving.Net for Disney)
Mangold would provide further details about his idea in May in an interview with Gizmodo while promoting Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, “So when I mentioned to Kathy [Kennedy, Lucasfilm president] the idea that I had about going backward—really far backward—I was surprised that it excited her and the other wonderful people she works with at Lucasfilm.”
“For me, it’s about, I want to be part of the saga, but I also don’t want to be holding so much lore in the air that you can hardly tell a story,” he continued. “And what I really wanted to do, what I told her, was just can we make a kind of the Ten Commandments of the Force, you know? A kind of origin story of how the Force came to be known, understood, wielded, and harnessed.”
LONDON, ENGLAND – APRIL 07: James Mangold, Dave Filoni and Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy onstage during the studio panel at Star Wars Celebration 2023 in London at ExCel on April 07, 2023 in London, England. (Photo by Kate Green/Getty Images for Disney)
What do you make of Lucasfilm abandoning a Guillermo del Toro helmed Star Wars movie? What do you make of them tapping James Mangold to direct a film that appears to be very similar to
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