Rian Johnson says new Star Wars trilogy won’t be The Old Republic
Almost exactly one month ago, it was confirmed that filmmaker Rian Johnson was staying in the Lucasfilm family and would develop a brand new trilogy of Star Wars movies. It was revealed that the new Star Wars trilogy would revolve around “new characters from a corner of the galaxy that Star Wars lore has never before explored,” and as a result speculation has run wild about what the project could be. Speaking with Mashable, however, Johnson shot down one of the ideas fans have run wild with: An Old Republic trilogy.
“Oh, they love Knights of the Old Republic,” Johnson said. “I played that game when it first came out and it was like, god, I loved it. Yeah, that’s a fantastic game. And I understand it, the instinct to automatically go to something that you know and love, that you’ve already seen… To me, what’s really fun is the notion of what new stuff are we gonna see, what new stories can we tell?”
Johnson is still in the early stages of development on the film and tells the outlet that he’s still “figuring out what it’s gonna be.”
Within Star Wars lore, The Old Republic Era came thousands of years before even Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace, in a time when the worlds of the galaxy first came together. In addition, at that time The Jedi Order was large enough for a block of it to break off and become The Sith, which would further splinter the world and lead to the events of the feature films. Countless comics and novels have been written about the era, but the Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic video games are the most notable.
No timetable has been given on when we can expect this new Star Wars trilogy, but Johnson will write and direct at least the first film in the series with his longtime collaborator, Ram Bergman, set to produce the film.
Johnson’s Star Wars: The Last Jedi arrives in U.S. theaters on December 15, 2017.