Guillermo del Toro Nearly Directed a Star Wars Movie From The Dark Knight’s Writer

Guillermo del Toro was apparently working on a Star Wars movie that may have been about the rise of Jabba the Hutt. The Dark Knight trilogy writer David S. Goyer spilled the beans during an interview with Josh Horowitz, explaining that he wrote the script for the unproduced Lucasfilm movie.

“I wrote an unproduced Star Wars movie that Guillermo del Toro was going to direct,” Goyer said. “That was about four years ago.”

When asked why the del Toro-directed Star Wars film never came to be, he says, “There was just a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff going on at Lucasfilm at the time,” adding, “It’s a cool script.” As one might have guessed seeing as the film was going to be a del Toro project, Goyer confirms that there was a lot of cool art created for the shelved film.

Goyer’s words on a del Toro Star Wars movie are enticing, but the story doesn’t stop there. The Shape of Water and Pan’s Labyrinth filmmaker himself caught wind of the exchange and chimed in to tease what the project would have been about. In an X post, del Toro simply confirmed that the film indeed existed, saying, “Can’t say much. Maybe two letters ‘J’ and ‘BB’ is that three letters?” Fans quickly latched on to his tease, speculating that the movie may have involved the round droid friend, BB-8, or maybe even Jar Jar Binks.

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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

What seems far more likely is that del Toro is teasing that the film would have involved intergalactic gangster, Jabba the Hutt. During a 2015 interview with Yahoo Movies, the dark, artsy creative mused about how he would introduce his work into the Star Wars universe.

“This is not real, this is me as a fat geek just geeking out and talking about it,” del Toro said of his Star Wars dreams at the time. “I would do the sort of Godfather saga that Jabba the Hutt had to go through to gain control. One, because it’s the character that looks the most like me, and I like him. I love the idea of a Hutt type of mafia, a very complex coup. I just love the character.”

It seems del Toro may have nearly gotten his wish. The Star Wars movie will likely never see the light of day, and with details so light, it’s hard to say what it would have been about exactly. Still, perhaps with enough support from fans, maybe Disney will come around someday.