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After ‘Star Wars: The Last Jedi‘ debuts this week we know that Rian Johnson has a huge commitment with Lucasfilm about him which isn’t too surprising from early reviews. What is surprising, is how he was able to wrangle in a new trilogy under the ‘Star Wars’ banner. Johnson pitch didn’t include a location, era, or even plot. It consisted of a conversation saying he had a good time working with Lucasfilm and “we” should do it again sometime – and it worked!

First, he was asked if there was a conscious decision made that he would be working on ‘Star Wars: The Last Jedi’ and not the ninth film in the saga:

“It was never even really a decision. That’s always just the way it was. It was always just the plan for me to do this and then hand it off to the next filmmaker, whoever that was gonna be. So yeah.”

This wasn’t exactly news as we had long heard that a variety of directors would be tackling the upcoming movies. As to what he can talk about for the new trilogy?

“There’s not much to talk about, honestly. I’m just at the beginning of the beginning of it.”

How far from the beginning? Well, that was revealed with how exactly he pitched the idea to Lucasfilm’s President Kathleen Kennedy:

“No. It came about because we were getting to the end of making this and again, I knew I wasn’t doing the next one. And I had had a really good time not just making this movie, but working with Kathy and also working with Disney, working with Bob Iger, Alan Horn, and Alan Berg. And we just had just a really good experience. And we were all…it was like last week of senior year. We were cleaning out our lockers. And all getting kind of sad. And saying, how do we keep working together? And that I threw out, I said, the most interesting thing to me would be a new trilogy, one story told over three movies. Go new places, meet new folks, come up with a new story to tell in the Star Wars universe. The sky’s the limit. That sounds thrilling. And they really responded to that. So we’re off, yeah.”

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, there was no story pitched. In fact, it sounds as if he might still not know what direction he’ll be taking his installment in as when asked to clarify that there was no specific story idea he stated. “Yeah, that was it. That was the pitch.”

Clearly, the force is strong with this one.

Are you excited that Rian Johnson is getting to break new ground with his upcoming trilogy or are you a bit annoyed that this is moving forward without even an initial plot in mind? What time period do you hope Johnson will cover in his trilogy? Share your thoughts below!

Source: Slash Film