Guillermo Del Toro Teases The Star Wars Villain Movie He Almost Directed
Oscar-winning filmmaker Guillermo del Toro and "The Dark Knight" trilogy co-writer David S. Goyer were once in contention to make a "Star Wars" movie featuring one of the major villains from the original trilogy.
"I wrote an unproduced 'Star Wars' movie that Guillermo del Toro was going to direct," Goyer told Josh Horowitz in an Instagram clip from the "Happy Sad Confused" podcast. "It was about four years ago ... dabbling in 'Star Wars' would have been fun for me."
As to why the film was never produced, Goyer explained, "There was just a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff going on at Lucasfilm at the time, but it's a cool script ... there's a lot of cool artwork from it that was produced."
Responding to Horowitz's post of the interview clip on X, formerly known as Twitter, del Toro confirmed Goyer's story about their "Star Wars" project but stopped short of saying which character the film would have been about. "True. Can't say much. Maybe two letters 'J' and 'BB' is that three letters?" he slyly noted in reply.
While del Toro didn't land the job of directing, uh, a "Star Wars" film — or can we just say Jabba? — he's created his own movie settings that have fans wondering about his love for George Lucas' space opera. However, while it appears del Toro put a "Star Wars" homage in "Hellboy II" with his Troll Market scene, the director clarified how he took specific measures to separate it from the famous cantina sequence.
Goyer also wrote something about the Jedi's origins
While David S. Goyer's and Guillermo del Toro's "Star Wars" movie never came to fruition, the scribe at least got the chance to work with the filmmaker on the Netflix series "Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities," where he wrote the teleplay for the episode "The Autopsy."
Before that, Goyer finally wrote a couple of tales about that galaxy far, far away with Episodes 1, 2, and 3 of the video game "Vader Immortal: A Star Wars VR Series" in 2019, but that's not all. He has another "Star Wars" film that hasn't seen the light of day.
"I also have an unproduced — I have a 'scriptment' [a combined script and treatment] — for an origins of the Jedi movie also for 'Star Wars' that I wrote for them that took place 25,000 years before the first 'Star Wars' film," Goyer told Josh Horowitz.
Only time will tell whether Goyer's Jedi story will be a part of the new "Star Wars" timeline announced in April 2023, which includes "Dawn of the Jedi." Set to be directed by "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny" filmmaker James Mangold, "Star Wars: Dawn of the Jedi," like Goyer's scriptment, is set 25,000 years before 1977's "Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope."