Disney Turned Down Zack Snyder’s Star Wars Movie, But He’s Making It Anyway

Disney Turned Down Zack Snyder’s Star Wars Movie, But He’s Making It Anyway

Back in 2013 when Disney had just purchased Lucasfilm and the rumour mill was still in full flight, a very interesting tidbit emerged about Zack Snyder’s involvement with Star Wars. Around the same time J.J. Abrams became involved with Disney for The Force Awakens, it was rumoured Snyder was working on a Kurosawa-inspired Star Wars film featuring rogue Jedi warriors.

While the reports were never officially confirmed at the time, but Snyder has now confirmed an initial pitch with Disney fell through. While details are still scarce, Snyder recently revealed to the Happy Sad Confused podcast that his film was set to take place separate from the Skywalker saga, and would likely have featured his own original characters. “My idea was just: give me the keys and I’ll take her for a spin,” he said on the podcast.

Slashfilm reports the project would have been set after Return of the Jedi, with a script heavily inspired by Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai. While the pitch never ended up going ahead, it doesn’t appear the project is dead.

While Snyder doesn’t have access to the Star Wars mythology, he told Happy Sad Confused he plans on re-developing the concept as a stand-alone property. “I’ve been working on it, just away from the Star Wars universe, just on my own as a sci-fi thing,” he explained. “It’s still a sci-fi thing, it’s the same story, it’s just kind of — let Star Wars be Star Wars.”

Given how gangbusters his recent projects (Zack Snyder’s Justice League, Army of the Dead) have gone, there’s no doubt the idea of a Zack Snyder-led Star Wars-Kurosawa hybrid would be an interesting one.

Despite his films being incredibly divisive, there’s no denying just how well Snyder understands action. From Justice League to Army of the Dead and even his older films Sucker Punch and Watchmen, there’s plenty of wild and exciting set-pieces that should convince anyone Snyder is capable of creating the next big space epic.

Even without the Star Wars IP, the project could be a real winner. Good space operas are few and far between and while Disney currently has a monopoly on them, there’s certainly room for more space-faring adventures.

We’ll have to stay tuned to see if this concept makes it past the scripting phase and onto the big screen.


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