Guillermo Del Toro Almost Directed A Star Wars Movie Starring Jabba The Hutt
This is why we can't have nice things. Even though Guillermo del Toro has created some of the most indelible movies we've ever seen, there's an even longer list of unmade projects that the famed Mexican filmmaker has been attached to at one point or another over the decades ... but was never able to bring over the finish line. (Seriously, it even has its own Wikipedia page and it's not even a complete list!) Sadly, most (if not all) of these will never come to fruition, leaving the rest of us to endlessly daydream about the possibilities. From "The Hobbit" to "At the Mountains of Madness" to his much scarier version of "Haunted Mansion," every del Toro fan remains haunted by what could have been.
His latest brush with franchise glory will come as no surprise to those who've been following the bread crumbs throughout the last several years. In 2015, we covered some intriguing quotes about what he'd do should he ever find himself in charge of a "Star Wars" movie — in short, a Jabba the Hutt gangster movie in the vein of "The Godfather," documenting the ruthless slug's rise to villainy. When Disney put their focus on the movie that would become "The Force Awakens," del Toro was one of the first names they called, though his schedule was far too packed at the time to even consider it. Finally, we'd last heard in 2017 that the director had actually met with Kathleen Kennedy, but those discussions never went very far, either.
Now, longtime industry veteran and del Toro's "Blade II" writer David Goyer has poured fuel on the fire all over again. In a new interview, Goyer reveals he'd written a "Star Wars" script to be directed by del Toro. And the normally tight-lipped del Toro confirmed its focus: Jabba the Hutt.
Let del Toro touch Jabba!
Let us all comfort ourselves with the idea that Guillermo del Toro is too good for "Star Wars" anyway. That's what I'll be telling myself, at least, whenever I find myself losing sleep over the fact that Disney didn't immediately put a del Toro film set in that galaxy far, far away into production. He's since gone on to deliver several quintessentially del Toro projects without even a whiff of studio interference, which has been a common thread through many of his aborted features over the years. But, man, just imagine what he could've done with a canvas as vast as this one!
In a recent appearance on Josh Horowitz's "Happy Sad Confused" podcast, writer David Goyer revealed that he'd once written a "Star Wars" script that ultimately fell by the wayside. He also described a separate treatment that sounds awfully similar to what James Mangold is now directing for Lucasfilm with "Dawn of the Jedi." As he explained:
"I wrote an unproduced 'Star Wars' movie that Guillermo del Toro was gonna direct ... That was about four years ago, and then I also wrote an unproduced — I have a 'scriptment' for an origins of the Jedi movie, also from 'Star Wars' that I wrote for them that took place 25,000 years before the first 'Star Wars' film. I got to do the Vader Immortal VR thing, but dabbling in 'Star Wars' would've been fun for me."
As for that del Toro feature, could it have possibly been the very same Jabba the Hutt film he'd previously waxed poetic about? No need to speculate, as the filmmaker took to Twitter to confirm and further tease the subject of the film: "True. Can't say much. Maybe two letters 'J' and 'BB' is that three letters?"
True. Can't say much. Maybe two letters "J" and "BB" is that three letters? https://t.co/qpGaSD3y7F
— Guillermo del Toro (@RealGDT) September 21, 2023
'A lot of behind-the-scenes stuff going on at Lucasfilm'
So what went wrong? It probably won't come as much of a shock to learn that, as has been the case with several "Star Wars" movies in development since Disney took over Lucasfilm, this script was ultimately shelved by the studio amid struggles to find a new direction in the aftermath of the sequel trilogy. Goyer went on to praise the script despite the issues above his paygrade (along with touting the artwork produced for this script, which he described as "cool" and hopefully will be shown the light of day at some point in the future):
"There was just a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff going on at Lucasfilm at the time, but it's a cool script."
Chalk this up as yet another project that simply wasn't meant to be, though it's difficult to imagine that a studio as gun-shy as Lucasfilm would have eagerly handed over the reins of a "Star Wars" feature to del Toro without studio-noting him to death. Given their past history with, for example, filmmakers like Phil Lord and Chris Miller on the heavily-reshot "Solo: A Star Wars Story" or Gareth Edwards on "Rogue One," maybe del Toro and Goyer both dodged a massive bullet here. And for those looking for an even more positive spin on this, the timeframe Goyer describes means that del Toro likely wouldn't have been able to deliver "Nightmare Alley," "Cabinet of Curiosities," or possibly even his "Pinocchio" adaptation, had he been stuck in "Star Wars" land instead.
Things happen for a reason, even if the universe seems intent on creating even more trust issues among del Toro fans.