A few weeks back, we got some exciting news that Star Wars: The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson would be coming back to the franchise. No, he wouldn’t be coming back to take on Star Wars: Episode IX, but would instead be coming back to develop a brand new trilogy for Lucasfilm.

RELATED – Rian Johnson Discusses His New Star Wars Trilogy

This film trilogy would be separate from the current saga, and it would also be separate from the standalone anthologies. So how did something like this actually come about? Speaking with Collider, Rian Johnson discussed how this idea first emerged.

“It was totally separate, it was never in the cards for me to [direct Episode 9]. I was always gonna finish [The Last Jedi] and then hand it off to the next filmmaker. But the idea for the new trilogy was completely separate; it just came because we were getting to the end of this process and kind of getting sad that we had to stop working. But like Kathy [Kennedy] and all the folks at Disney, we were just like, ‘We’ve had a really good time. How do we keep this party going a little longer?’”

So how exactly did they settle on a brand new trilogy, rather than jump into episodes 10, 11, and 12? Johnson continued:

“We were just generally talking about what could we do and I was like, ‘What would be most interesting to me is…’ and then I just said—it wasn’t even a specific pitch, the pitch was: ‘A new trilogy. Three movies, one story. New characters, new places. Let’s start fresh.’ That was the most exciting thing I could possibly think of and Kathy really responded to that and we’re gonna give it a shot.”

Clearly, Star Wars: The Last Jedi must really be something special if the notoriously director-unfriendly Lucasfilm is ready to get back into bed with Johnson, and we can’t wait to see why.

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SOURCE: Collider