{"id":413592,"date":"2026-01-17T20:25:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-17T20:25:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/413592\/"},"modified":"2026-01-17T20:25:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-17T20:25:08","slug":"rian-johnson-says-he-was-not-spooked-by-toxic-star-wars-fans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/413592\/","title":{"rendered":"Rian Johnson Says He Was Not ‘Spooked’ by Toxic ‘Star Wars’ Fans"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tRian Johnson<\/a> took to X on Friday night to shut down a claim from former Lucasfilm boss Kathleen Kennedy<\/a> that he was \u201cspooked by the online negativity\u201d and never returned to the \u201cStar Wars<\/a>\u201d franchise after helming \u201cThe Last Jedi.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn response to a post from IGN aggregating the news, he wrote<\/a>, \u201cLol zero spooked, sorry.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter 2017\u2019s \u201cThe Last Jedi,\u201d Johnson was set to develop another \u201cStar Wars\u201d trilogy. However, the project never got off the ground, and he instead shifted his focus to starting the \u201cKnives Out\u201d franchise.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn her exit interview with Deadline, Kennedy shared her side of the story on why Johnson never returned. While she did acknowledge that \u201cKnives Out\u201d ate up \u201ca huge amount of his time,\u201d she also claimed he got \u201ca little scared\u201d by the fan backlash to \u201cThe Last Jedi\u201d and decided to step away from the project.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI do believe he got spooked by the online negativity,\u201d Kennedy said. \u201cI think Rian made one of the best \u2018Star Wars\u2019 movies. He\u2019s a brilliant filmmaker and he got spooked. This is the rough part. When people come into this space, I have every filmmaker and actors say to me, \u2018What\u2019s going to happen?\u2019 They\u2019re a little scared.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSitting down with Rolling Stone last summer, Johnson said the trilogy never made it deep into development and was \u201call very conceptual.\u201d He explained that before any real progress could be made, \u201c\u2019Knives Out\u2019 happened\u201d and the \u201cStar Wars\u201d project fizzled out.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cNothing really happened with it,\u201d Johnson said<\/a>. \u201cWe had a great time working together, and they said, \u2018Let\u2019s keep doing it.\u2019 I said, \u2018Great!\u2019 I would kick ideas around with Kathy. The short version is \u2018Knives Out\u2019 happened. I went off and made \u2018Knives Out,\u2019 and was off to the races, busy making murder mysteries. It\u2019s the sort of thing if, down the line, there\u2019s an opportunity to do it, or do something else in \u2018Star Wars,\u2019 I would be thrilled. But right now I\u2019m just doing my own stuff, and pretty happy.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rian Johnson took to X on Friday night to shut down a claim from former Lucasfilm boss Kathleen…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":413593,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[88,196749,206,495,5295],"class_list":["post-413592","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-kathleen-kennedy","tag-movies","tag-rian-johnson","tag-star-wars"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413592","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=413592"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413592\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/413593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=413592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=413592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=413592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}