Director Rian Johnson Thought He Was Just Going To A Casual Meeting When He Was Hired For The Last Jedi
Rian Johnson's latest film, "Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery," is currently finishing up a week-long theatrical run before it hits Netflix in late December. To celebrate the occasion, Johnson recently joined the Smartless podcast with hosts Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes, and Will Arnett to chat about the "Knives Out" sequel, as well as his body of work, including "Star Wars: The Last Jedi."
The third trilogy in the Skywalker saga was shrouded in secrecy, of course, and fans clamored online for any scrap of information about what was coming in the second film about Rey (Daisy Ridley) and her journey to become a Jedi. Before that film was even in pre-production, however, security was tight. Even Johnson didn't realize what was happening when he went in for a meeting with Lucasfilm President, Kathleen Kennedy.
On the podcast, Johnson spoke about some of the secrecy protocols that were in place to keep it all under wraps as well as his thoughts on details being leaked online and how it affects the film.
'Shut the door behind you'
During their conversation, Jason Bateman asked Rian Johnson whether or not he volunteered to direct "The Last Jedi." Here was Johnson's answer:
"Not at all, no. They [Lucasfilm] came to me. It was really a direct thing. It was [Kathleen Kennedy, Producer of 'The Last Jedi' and President of Lucasfilm] kind of setting a meeting [...] literally, I walked into the room thinking it was going to be a general meeting. And it was like, 'Shut the door behind you.'"
That sounds ominous, and depending on your feelings about the film, maybe prescient? (No one throw tomatoes at me. I liked it a lot.) Bateman also asked about the secrecy to prevent script leaks. Johnson explained that the scripts they sent were red "so that you can't photocopy them." Red backgrounds on scripts photocopy in black, making them unreadable. That wasn't all. Johnson added:
"It also means it's really hard to read [the red scripts ....] We also had these horrible e-readers that you had to enter a 12-digit code to get into that all of the actors had their scripts on, and it was a nightmare. It's a real pain in the butt, but it's also just kind of ... in terms of the secrecy of it, I mean, you want to preserve it for the audience, but there's also the level where it's just like people sending drones to take pictures of a space truck that's going to be in the background."
While it does seem odd that even the director got a red script, you never know — The "Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker" script nearly leaked when John Boyega, who plays Finn, accidentally left his copy in his apartment when he moved. A cleaner put it up on eBay, though Disney quickly bought it back.
'It just turns into a game'
Rian Johnson isn't as worked up about things leaking as one might expect. He said on the podcast that it all "just turns into a game of, 'Can we stop them from leaking more stuff?'" and said that he thinks it's fun when things find their way onto the internet. He added, "I grew up trolling the internet. Back when the prequels were coming out in my 20s, we were all trying to get every little scrap we could get."
It's nice to know that even a major director like Johnson was someone looking for leaks back in the day. Keeping details about movies in production under wraps is a struggle that major film studios have to deal with, and it's constantly getting harder to prevent leaks. Fans are pretty sophisticated these days, and sometimes they know more lore and facts than even the people working on the production. That means a leaked word or picture can give them a whole lot of clues. And for "Star Wars," leaks are a hazard that goes along with continuing a saga that began over four decades ago.
"Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery" stars Daniel Craig as detective Benoit Blanc, who is out to solve a new case. The film will begin streaming on Netflix on December 23, 2022.