Damon Lindelof Drops Out of STAR WARS Project After Turning in a Draft of the Script
Damon Lidelof (Watchmen, The Leftovers) was hired by Lucasfilm several months ago to help develop a new Star Wars film project with co-writer Justin Britt-Gibson and director Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy (Ms. Marvel). Well, his involvement didn’t last long as he and Britt-Gibson are no longer a part of the project.
Above The Line reports that only days after Lindelof and Britt-Gibson turned in a draft of the script back in February they parted ways with the project. The report goes on to say that Lucasfilm already has a new writer on board, but there’s no information on who that is.
Production on the film is scheduled to start shooting in February 2024 ahead of the film’s planned release date on Dec. 19, 2025 and Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy is still attached to direct it.
When recently talking about his involvement with Star Wars at SXSW, Lindelof cast some doubt on his involvement with the Star Wars project, telling /Film: “I will just say, that for reasons that I can’t get into on this Sunday morning, on this day, the degree of difficulty is extremely, extremely, extremely high. If it can’t be great, it shouldn’t exist. That’s all I’ll say, because I have the same association with it as you do, which is, it’s the first movie I saw sitting in my dad’s lap, four years old, May of ’77. I think it’s possible that sometimes when you hold something in such high reverence and esteem, you start to get in the kitchen and you just go, ‘Maybe I shouldn’t be cooking. Maybe I should just be eating.’ We’ll just leave it at that.”
Lindelof previously opened up about wanting to take a crack at Star Wars, saying: "[At] some point, but certainly not in the immediate future, I feel like I would love to do something in the 'Star Wars' universe. Maybe a decade from now when I would no longer be blamed for ruining it. That would be a hoot."
Well, Lindelof got his opportunity to work on a Star Wars project, and it sounds like it didn’t really go over the way he expected or hoped it would.
All we knew about the story that Lindelof was developing was that it was set after Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, but it was not a direct continuation of the Skywalker Saga. The plan was to make a standalone film that could expand over the course of several other films and there are characters from the sequel trilogy that could show up, but that wasn’t confirmed.
With a new writer jumping on board the project, we don’t know if that person will start from scratch or rewrite the script that was turned in. Who knows if this project will even get made!? Lucasfilm doesn’t have the best track record these days with following through with their Star Wars film projects. Lindelof and Britt-Gibson parting ways may just be the first of many hiccups this project faces.