Simon Kinberg draws parallels with Logan, as he talks about his Boba Fett Star Wars film that never was.
Simon Kinberg has been reflecting on his time in the Star Wars universe, recollecting the couple of weeks he spent at Skywalker Ranch with two other screenwriting luminaries in the form of Micheal Arndt and Lawrence Kasdan, breaking new stories set in A Galaxy Far, Far Away. The trio were tasked with dreaming up a direction for Lucasfilm’s space opera franchise given that it had recently been purchased by Disney and was set for a huge resurrection. Kinberg, who has a CV that boasts script credits for Mr and Mrs Smith, Sherlock Holmes and lots of X-Men films to name but a few was invited to be part of that process.
According to Kinberg, the trio formed a ‘kind of mini writers room’ where they would ‘break ideas and stories and brainstorm’. Eventually, they split up and wrote one film each. Arndt would write The Force Awakens (before JJ Abrams and Kasdan would rewrite it), Kasdan would pen Solo: A Star Wars Story whilst Kinberg would draft a soo adventure for the series’ beloved bounty hunter, Boba Fett.
Whilst the other two projects would eventually emerge into the world, the untitled Boba Fett project would ultimately be scrapped, following the first major blip in Disney’s stewardship of the franchise. Chronicle director, Josh Trank was brought in to helm the film and then quit (or was fired), sparking a decade of projects that would be cancelled, reworked or suspended.
Kinberg has opened up just a little about his Boba Fett story, discussing the tone by adding: ‘I mean, it’s all pretty sci-fi, but I think ‘hard’ is the right word. Tonally like Logan. On the edge of R-rated, though I don’t think you’d have a Star Wars movie that could be R-rated.’
A Boba Fett movie that played like 2017’s Logan could have been quite the film to behold, not least because a harder edge would have delighted long-time fans of the character who is supposed to represent the more violent and morally-compromised corner of the Star Wars universe. Instead we eventually got The Book of Boba Fett, a Disney+ series that was largely sanitised, neutering the character’s spikier edges and resulting in one of Disney’s lowest-quality Star Wars offerings.
Still, at least Kinberg ended up co-creating the excellent Rebels animated show in the Star Wars universe. You can find a piece covering Disney’s decade of cancellations, firings and general mis-management of the Star Wars series right here.
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