Kevin Feige's Star Wars Movie Could've Involved The Russo Brothers
It's May the Fourth, an annual event for celebrating all things associated with a galaxy far, far away. But for all the "Star Wars" goodness that there is to appreciate, today we're going to talk about something "Star Wars"-related that many folks are, to be frank, probably thankful isn't happening.
Strange and perhaps unnecessarily harsh as that might sound, it's not just yours truly being negative for the sake of it. The "Star Wars" franchise has had a lot of close calls since the House of Mouse took the reins from George Lucas. Some of them even sounded better than what we actually got, from Colin Trevorrow's original "Episode IX" script draft, "Duel of the Fates," to the version of "Solo: A Star Wars Story" that Phil Lord and Chris Miller were assembling prior to Ron Howard taking over as director. In other cases, one cannot help but breathe a sigh of relief that certain creatives parted ways with their "Star Wars" creations, like when "Game of Thrones" duo David Benioff and D.B. Weiss's proposed trilogy was canceled.
Among the more recent high-profile productions to apparently get the axe (lightsaber?) from Lucasfilm was the enigmatic "Star Wars" movie being produced by Marvel Studios head honcho Kevin Feige. With so little information to go off of (not to mention the confusion about just how far along the film had even gotten), it's been difficult to form an opinion over whether this was ultimately a good or bad thing. However, now that it's come to light that the Russo brothers — the former Marvel Studios directors who now spend their days making multi-million dollar "meh" projects — were potentially going to be involved, well, it certainly colors one's impression of the situation.
It's a trap!
Look, the Russos pulled off the directorial equivalent of taking your various action figures, smashing them together, and having it make a lick of sense with their efforts on "Avengers: Infinity War" and "Endgame," and for that, we can all commend them. But outside of producing "Everything Everywhere All at Once" (the success of which had very little to do with them), they've since come to embody so much of what's afflicting Hollywood at this juncture. From helming painfully generic $200 million Netflix movies to backing overly-expensive, soulless Prime Video series, the pair have speedily burned through most of the goodwill they once had. And that's before touching on Joe Russo's unsavory championing of AI-driven entertainment.
Speak of the devil, it was Joe Russo who confirmed he and his sibling were nearly involved with Kevin Feige's "Star Wars" film. "We love 'Star Wars,'" said Russo, speaking on the "Smartless" podcast (via Variety). He added:
"There were early conversations, there were some early conversations with us. Kevin Feige is a huge 'Star Wars' fan, and there were some early conversations about maybe teaming up with Kevin to do 'Star Wars.'"
The revolving door of big-name creatives who've boarded a "Star Wars" movie only to end up leaving it has almost come to feel like a running gag at this stage. Still, this is one case where it's hard for me not to be grateful that things fell apart as abruptly as they did. Now, with Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy expressing her desire to return to making fewer "Star Wars" films at a slower rate (a quality-over-quantity approach, in other words), there's all the more reason to be hopeful about the future of the franchise on the big screen going forward. Rebellions are built on hope, dontcha know.