Star Wars: The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson has responded to outgoing Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy’s claim that he was put off making more Star Wars as he “got spooked by the online negativity”.
The Knives Out, Glass Onion, and Wake Up Dead Man creator replied to IGN’s social media post of the story on X with a simple, but to-the-point message: “lol zero spooked, sorry”.
lol zero spooked, sorry https://t.co/1gWREzKxAO
— Rian Johnson (@rianjohnson) January 17, 2026
In a Deadline interview with the departing Lucasfilm head, Kennedy suggested that Johnson decided not to continue with early plans for him to make his own Star Wars trilogy, following the intense online backlash to The Last Jedi.
“Once he made the Netflix deal and went off to start doing the Knives Out films, that has occupied a huge amount of his time,” Kennedy remarked regarding why Johnson didn’t continue with the Star Wars projects. “And then I do believe he got spooked by the online negativity,” she continued. “I think Rian made one of the best Star Wars movies. He’s a brilliant filmmaker and he got spooked. This is the rough part. When people come into this space, I have every filmmaker and actors say to me, ‘What’s going to happen?’ They’re a little scared.”
This, of course, isn’t the first time Johnson has spoken about his difficulties when it comes to Star Wars. In December 2025, he stated that his intentions for The Last Jedi was to be a movie that “shook the box” to upend fan expectations, rather than approach its audience “kid gloves” and serve up the same old story.
“Having grown up a Star Wars fan, I know that thing where something challenges it, and I know the recoil against that”, Johnson told Polygon. I know how there can be infighting in the world of Star Wars. But I also know that the worst sin is to handle it with kid gloves.”
Of course, Rian Johnson’s Star Wars trilogy isn’t the only Star Wars project that will likely never see the light of day. In the very same interview with Deadline, Kennedy also mentioned the now-abandoned plans to make a Ben Solo movie starring Adam Driver, stating that “anything’s a possibility if somebody’s willing to take a risk.”
As for what we’ll actually see next from a galaxy far, far away, 2026 will see The Mandalorian and Grogu, a spinoff movie from the hit Disney+ TV series. Then in 20217, the standalone Ryan Gosling-starring Star Wars: Starfighter.
Simon Cardy is a Senior Editor at IGN who can mainly be found skulking around open world games, indulging in Korean cinema, or despairing at the state of Tottenham Hotspur and the New York Jets. Follow him on Bluesky at @cardy.bsky.social.