The Rise of Skywalker Who Should Direct Episode IX?

Wrinkle in Time looks questionable at best so Id say no to Ava Duvernay.

GDT is more into fairytale gothic fantasy. Id rather he not try to cross over into star wars. Plus he is way too unreliable. He'd probably quit the project. And he'd probably want the film to be shot in 1.85:1 which would annoy the **** out me.

Brad Bird needs to stay focused on Incredibles 2.

Peter Jackson's productions are too bloated and fly by the seat of their pants so that probably wouldnt work well for Disney and Lucasfilm.
 
Peter Jackson should have quit while he was ahead with Lord of the Rings and not done The Hobbit. What happened with The Hobbit pretty much crippled his reputation. Great example of how to take a simple little adventure story and turn it into a massive, overstuffed, barely comprehensible nine-hour CGI mess.
 
I would not call Filoni a "first-time director", as he has multiple directorial credits on The Clone Wars and Rebels. He also worked directly with Lucas and has an intimate understanding of Star Wars.

He's never done live action before. And Rebels, except for a few choice episodes in season 2, has been kind of disappointment. Filoni is overrated, IMO.
 
I'll never understand why Doug Liman doesn't get more love.
 
Peter Jackson should have quit while he was ahead with Lord of the Rings and not done The Hobbit. What happened with The Hobbit pretty much crippled his reputation. Great example of how to take a simple little adventure story and turn it into a massive, overstuffed, barely comprehensible nine-hour CGI mess.

I blame WB more for the Hobbit's bloat than Peter Jackson. GDT was originally supposed to do the Hobbit IIRC, and it was going to be one or two films, but WB ended up stretching it to three because they knew they would make a boat load of cash if it was 3 movies instead of one or two. Peter Jackson wanted to return to the world and they gave him and his friends a cartful of cash and prizes, hell, I would have stretched the Hobbit into a 10 parter for that lol. I'm honestly shocked WB hasn't tried to make the Silmarillion into a movie yet. (I've never read it, heard it was "good, but film-able", but when has that stopped WB...)
 
The biggest problem going forward is it's going to be difficult to attract the kind of young talent Lucasfilm were clearly going for. On paper Star Wars is the dream project for a lot of these filmmakers who grew up with the original films, but now there's a precedent for such talent to have their film taken over by older, more seasoned directors, or being fired entirely. Those are conditions that would make me pause for a moment before signing on.
 
Terrence Malick. :dry:
 
Rian Johnson is my choice. He's already set the trajectory, now let him bring it home.
 
Judging by precedent, Ron Howard was the front runner for replacing Miller & Lord on Han Solo -- and got the gig.

So I have a good feeling Kathy Kennedy will offer Episode IX to Rian Johnson, since he is obviously is at the top of her list.
 
I blame WB more for the Hobbit's bloat than Peter Jackson. GDT was originally supposed to do the Hobbit IIRC, and it was going to be one or two films, but WB ended up stretching it to three because they knew they would make a boat load of cash if it was 3 movies instead of one or two. Peter Jackson wanted to return to the world and they gave him and his friends a cartful of cash and prizes, hell, I would have stretched the Hobbit into a 10 parter for that lol. I'm honestly shocked WB hasn't tried to make the Silmarillion into a movie yet. (I've never read it, heard it was "good, but film-able", but when has that stopped WB...)

I think Christoper Tolkien has to give the OK for any more Tolkien material to be filmed, and he's completely against any more movies.

What really bugs me is that PJ had the PERFECT cast but didn't do much with them. All of the dwarves had distinct personalities and great back stories but little of it got onscreen and only a few of them got any decent screen time. Bombur never had a single line.

I don't think PJ is much interested in Star Wars. He might be pretty much done with big franchises.

I'd like to see Steven Spielberg do Episode IX.
 
Last edited:
Hey, if it's not arthouse, I'm not interested, okcurr? :o
 
I'd like hear Luke whisper the virtues of the force while a montage of Ahch-To's landscape slowly plays.
 
Chris Nolan said he would only take directing gigs where he felt "needed". Unless Star Wars has a Batman & Robin type flop, I don't think he'll ever be needed. He'd just be another company man, which is clearly what he's not into. This is ultimately why the 007 stuff have never materialized.

The only big names I see interested are JJ and Rian.

I don't think he'd be a good fit for an Episode, but I think Edgar Wright would actually be a really good fit for one of the stand alone stories. I don't think he and Disney could work it out, but his artistic voice would be cool in Star Wars.
 
Get Rian and get it over with. It makes too much sense. Or Brad Bird.

There are other female directors out there besides DuVernay and Patty Jenkins. There's plenty of room for others, otherwise it's not making much of a difference.

You know Tarantino's comment years ago on directing a SW movie is becoming more true, as much as I dismissed it at the time. "I don't want to see Jon Turteltaub's Star Wars movie."
 
Last edited:
I think maybe let's wait and see the reception for Last Jedi first. There's also the question of would Johnson want to come back?
 
If the money's right and given how he wrote the treatment for 9, I can see it. This is all assuming things have truly been okay behind the scenes with them on the movie. I feel like we would have heard something by now if that were the case.

I'm just still baffled by how Rian Johnson of all people got along great with Kennedy and made a movie she was happy with and not Colin Trevorrow, the guy who was hired because people get along with him.
 
I think it is pretty obvious that Kennedy's husband got Trevorrow the job. And as reports say, he got a bit of a big head due to Jurassic World's success.
 
I mean how is that? What about Steven Spielberg? She has a relationship with Kennedy as well, and Spielberg was the person who convinced Abrams to do Star Wars. Spielberg hand-picked Trevorrow for Jurassic World. How do you know that didn't convince Kennedy to be willing to offer him the job.
 
Sounds like Rian is trying to ease himself out of this discussion...

http://www.thewrap.com/star-wars-rian-johnson-episode-ix-episode-9/amp/

“Whoever does it, I’m going to be really excited to be an audience member again, and to sit down and see what the next filmmaker has to show us and where this story ends up going,” said Johnson, whose previous work includes the 2012 sci-fi movie “Looper.”

If talks were semi-serious, I would think Kennedy would have asked him to say nothing at all about it, or something to the effect of "yea, I'd love to do another SW film, but I'm concentrating on 8 right now..." so the fact that he says this much about wanting to be an "audience member" seems like he, at least maybe in his own head, really isn't in the running.
 
Last edited:
I don't blame Rian. Did not think he would want to work with Kennedy again. He may not be so lucky a second time.
 
I think he's the ideal candidate, but if he doesn't want to he shouldn't feel obligated. Making these kinds of films is tough, for a variety of reasons.
 
Also looking at his filmography, I noticed Rian takes a long time between films. That suggests to me that he needs to refill his creative juices before diving back into a project. The current timeframe that Kathleen Kennedy has for these films won't allow for that obviously.
 

Users who are viewing this thread

Back
Top
monitoring_string = "afb8e5d7348ab9e99f73cba908f10802"