Rian Johnson Is Returning To Sci-Fi — But Not Star Wars
The Knives Out director is heading back to his old stomping grounds.
Rian Johnson has spent nearly 10 years building the world of Knives Out, and to great effect, but there’s a league of fans who know him best from his sci-fi work. Johnson delivered a heady time travel thriller in 2012, Looper, before helming a now-infamous chapter of the Star Wars saga. The Last Jedi was surprisingly divisive, but those who picked up on Johnson’s intent saw it as the breath of fresh air the franchise desperately needed. The director has been loosely attached to a new trilogy of films ever since, but after being stuck in purgatory for almost a decade, it’s safe to say that Johnson isn’t yet ready to return to that galaxy far away.
“That cog will be turning the rest of my life,” Johnson recently told Empire of his Star Wars trilogy. “I love Star Wars... And if some day it makes sense to come back to it, for both of us, it would be the most wonderful thing in the world.”
10 years after Looper, Rian Johnson might be working on another sci-fi thriller.
That said, Johnson isn’t taking a break from sci-fi on the whole. With the third Knives Out film, Wake Up Dead Man, set for release, the director is free to pivot to a new story idea. “The most exciting thing right now is this idea I have in my head for the next thing I’m gonna make, and I think ultimately, that’s all you can do, is just kind of follow your nose,” he continued. “If I had to define it genre-wise, I’d say it harkens back to the ’70s paranoid thrillers. It’s got a light sci-fi element to it.”
Whatever this new idea is, it would be Johnson’s first return to sci-fi since The Last Jedi. The filmmaker has always been interested in pulpy, paranoid thrillers, and while the Knives Out saga taps into that niche, it would be great to see Johnson direct another high-concept genre piece. The murder mystery allows him to explore twisty narratives with ease, as his TV series, Poker Face, has demonstrated. Still, it’d be nice to see what other original ideas Johnson has up his sleeve. Fans seem hungry for something new from the director, and if Star Wars is on the back burner, then a sci-fi thriller would be a welcome consolation prize.
