Fired Disney Writer Damon Lindelof Drops New Details on His Ill-Fated ‘Star Wars’ Project with Daisy Ridley

Damon Lindelof has spoken openly about his unfinished plans for a Star Wars movie that would have starred Daisy Ridley as Rey Skywalker. His comments come from an interview with House of R, where he talked about his time working with Lucasfilm and what the project could have become.

The project was first linked to Lindelof after Disney and Lucasfilm announced in 2023 that Daisy Ridley would return as Rey in a film set after Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. At the time, many fans thought Lindelof’s version of the story was moving forward. However, that version of the film was later dropped, and Lucasfilm moved in a different direction.

In his interview, Lindelof said clearly that he was removed from the project. He explained, “Just to talk about the Bantha in the room, I was fired off of a Star Wars movie … They asked me, ‘What do you think a Star Wars movie should be?’ And I said, ‘Here’s what it should be.’ And they said, ‘Great, you’re hired.’ And then two years later, I was fired. And so I was wrong, at least through that prism.”

He also talked about how the writing process was difficult and slow. According to him, the size of the franchise made everything harder to shape.

He said, “I may have been fired, not just – because they seemed to like the premise – it was just the writing was really hard. It was slow. The tone, getting it right, where it was inside of the canon, what its relationship was with [The Rise of Skywalker]. Is it starting a new trilogy? Is it all of those things? They’re so massive. They’re so big … sort of like a tanker, which is you turn the wheel and it takes five minutes before it turns a little bit.”

Lindelof also shared what kind of idea he and his team were trying to build. He worked with Justin Britt-Gibson and Rayna McClendon. He said they wanted to explore big themes inside the story itself.

He explained, “What we were attempting to do, my partner Justin Britt-Gibson and Rayna McClendon and I, what we were attempting to do was to have this conversation in the movie, which is to say there is a force of nostalgia and there is a force of revision and they are at odds with one another, and let’s do the Protestant Reformation inside Star Wars and it didn’t work,” according to House of R reporting.

He added that they wanted the story to reflect the tension between old ideas and new directions in the saga. He also said, “You have your cake and eat it, too. But the conversation that the fandom is having, without winking and looking at the audience … that didn’t feel necessarily that risky.”

Lindelof also questioned how the center of the Star Wars universe keeps shifting. He compared earlier films focused on Rey, Finn, and Poe with newer projects like The Mandalorian. He said, “We’re looking for the center of Star Wars… My new question is, are Mando and Grogu the center of Star Wars?”

The future of Star Wars films is still unclear. Lucasfilm continues to develop new projects, including upcoming releases tied to different characters and timelines. Some past spin-offs like Rogue One performed well, while others like Solo had weaker results, according to box office and review data reported by entertainment trackers such as Rotten Tomatoes.

As of now, Lindelof’s version of the Rey movie will not move forward, and Lucasfilm is continuing to reshape its long-term plans for the franchise.

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