Lucasfilm assembled a secret TV writers' room to jump-start next Star Wars movie

Lucasfilm had no choice but to call in Damon Lindelof for a new Star Wars movie. Having burned through a whole generation of talent, including Rian Johnson, J.J. Abrams, Gareth Edwards, Patty Jenkins, and D.B. Weiss and David Benioff, Lindelof is the last of his class to get a Star Wars deal. Will it get made? Who knows! But if it does, you can guarantee many people will be mad about it, and that’s if it’s good and successful.

Lucasfilm isn’t messing around with Star Wars anymore. They’re getting in there and making a thing they can be proud of, a true artist’s vision to lead Star Wars into the future. The first step to a successful Star Wars movie: Assemble a writers’ room of TV people.

Per The Hollywood Reporter, last July, the studio assembled a secret writers’ room of TV writers to figure out why this movie thing isn’t working so well. Led by Lindelof, the writer of such beloved, not divisive movies as Tomorrowland, World War Z, Prometheus, Cowboys & Aliens, and Star Trek Into Darkness, the room consisted of some of TV’s most prominent writers. The Hollywood Reporter writes:

The room held a two-week session in July and at the table were Patrick Somerville, who worked with Lindelof on Leftovers and then went on to create the buzzy Station Eleven; Rayna McClendon, a consulting producer on Lucasfilm’s own Obi-Wan Kenobi and writer on the company’s upcoming Willow series; and Andy Greenwald, the creator of the 2019 Rosario Dawson crime drama Briarpatch (on which McClendon was a story editor), among a couple of other writers.

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The other writer mentioned was Dave Filoni, the architect of modern Star Wars television, which makes sense. Still, we’re not sure why they needed a whole room of people to decide that “Yaddle goes on holiday” should be a movie, but ok. Out of that writers’ room, the studio hired Justin Britt-Gibson to write the script with Lindelof. Britt-Gibson previously wrote for The Strain and The Counterpart.

It is a little strange that all the names mentioned in the article are from television, not movies. So is this Lucasfilm’s plan to get Star Wars back on track? To make two-hour TV episodes that can span decades of films, spin-offs, and TV shows? Probably, but in the meantime, they’re just trying to write something that doesn’t have to do with a “stand-alone” Star War that “in success could lead to more movies.”

Who knows, maybe it’ll be good. Lindelof is one of the most exciting writers working. Watchmen and Leftovers are reason enough to give him a Star War—though because Lindleof’s name is always batted around when a big geeky property is involved, it feels like this news happened already. He’s been close.

In 2013, he told Grantland (via Digital Spy), “I’d say over the next decade, you and I are going to get five Star Wars films, and it won’t be Episode VII, but I may be involved in one of them when the pressure isn’t as intense.” He was right about two things: We got five Star Wars movies, and he’s involved with one of them. But, unfortunately, the pressure is the most intense it has been since 2015.

Two years later, he pitched a Lobot movie, which feels closer than ever to coming to fruition:

My hope is that, like, once they’ve run through everybody else in 20 or 22 years, they’ll be looking for someone to write the Lobot movie. I wanna know how he’s ended up working with Lando and exactly what that apparatus does and how he lost his hair. And, you know, I always root for the bald guy.

Lindelof spent the last decade waiting for his moment to spring a Lobot movie on Kathleen Kennedy, and it’s about to pay off. Well played, Lindelof. Well played.