Rian Johnson has had to come out and deny a report that he turned down the offer to direct Star Wars: Episode IX. Johnson of course directed Star Wars: Episode VIII The Last Jedi and the third movie in the trilogy was being written and directed by Colin Trevorrow. Trevorrow’s ‘Duel of the Fates’ script is out there if you care to check out his ideas. However, Trevorrow was effectively sacked and this left Lucasfilm looking for a director for Episode IX. In the end, they went back to Episode VII director J.J. Abrams. I bet they wish they hadn’t because he made in my opinion the worst ever Star Wars film to date.

However, in a recent article THR, they had this to say of Johnson. Claiming he was offered the chance to make IX and rejected it,

‘Yet while Last Jedi made good money and satisfied Lucasfilm enough for them to offer Johnson the next movie — which he politely declined — here at least was his first sustained taste of backlash. Some audience members rebelled against Jedi‘s moody take on Luke Skywalker and its meta sense of humor. “Before I made the Star Wars movie, when I was very, very active on Twitter, if someone said anything mean about me, I felt like I had to fix that,” Johnson says. Now he engages far more selectively. “Having grown up as a Star Wars fan, I think the love and the hate are two sides of the same coin, and it’s all passion for what the thing is. That doesn’t mean it’s easy to deal with when it’s coming at you in a personal way.””

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Since publication Johnson has taken to social media network BSky to claim this is in fact incorrect. Here’s what Johnson posted,

“That’s incorrect in the article, actually – I never was going to do it and never turned it down.”

I actually would love to know how Rian Johnson would have ended the story he wrote for The Last Jedi. Not because I liked that film, I thought it was horrible, just not as bad as The Rise of Skywalker. I just want to see if Johnson could find a way to end his story because I thought he and Abrams did a terrible job. Effectively leaving each other with nowhere to go. The Force Awakens started from a point too similar to A New Hope and as such left a trilogy no one cared about.

Anyway, the story is, Johnson never actually turned down the chance to direct Episode IX. Which, I’m not surprised at. At least, that’s what he says and what else can we go on? Thoughts below.

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