Star Wars has been around for five decades, and several major directors have had the chance to direct a franchise movie, but didn’t. In 1977, George Lucas wrote and directed the first Star Wars movie, but then he stepped aside to let other directors work on his franchise, with Irvin Kershner and Richard Marquand following him.
However, it wasn’t initially Marquand who was going to direct Return of the Jedi. Not only that, but George Lucas wasn’t planning on returning to direct the prequels at first. Finally, the sequel trilogy and spinoff movies also had a lot of turnover, with big-name directors coming and going from the franchise without making a movie.
David Lynch – Return Of The Jedi
After George Lucas directed Star Wars and Irvin Kershner helmed The Empire Strikes Back, Lucas was looking for someone to direct the third movie, Return of the Jedi. One of the first people he looked to was David Lynch, who was coming off a successful historical drama, The Elephant Man.
However, David Lynch eventually let Lucas know that he had “next to zero interest” in directing a Star Wars movie. Lynch wasn’t insulting the franchise; he said George Lucas should direct the film himself so it reflects his vision, not Lynch’s. Lucas didn’t direct it and moved on to look for someone else.
Interestingly, David Lynch made a different sci-fi movie, the adaptation of Dune, released the year after Return of the Jedi, which was a commercial failure for Lynch. Meanwhile, Return of the Jedi remains a beloved sci-fi classic.
David Cronenberg – Return Of The Jedi
After David Lynch turned down the chance to direct Return of the Jedi, George Lucas didn’t take Lynch’s advice to direct the movie himself. Instead, he looked to another big name in David Cronenberg. It was a weird choice, as Cronenberg was coming off The Brood and Scanners, very different from Lucas’s family-friendly tales.
However, like David Lynch, Cronenberg also turned down Lucas’s offer to make the Star Wars movie. This also wasn’t because he wasn’t a fan, as he said that DP Peter Suschitzky’s work on The Empire Strikes Back ensured it was “the only one of those movies that actually looked good and it looked really good.“
Cronenberg said he didn’t want to work on films written by others and went on to direct Videodrome, The Dead Zone, and The Fly after rejecting Return of the Jedi, showing he made the right decision. For the Star Wars movie, Lucas finally chose Richard Marquand, and that film turned out to be his only major hit.
Steven Spielberg – The Prequel Trilogy
After Return of the Jedi, George Lucas waited 16 years before he returned to the franchise. By this time, he had an idea for a prequel series that would show how Anakin Skywalker fell to the Dark Side and how the Jedi Order fell in the process. However, he wanted someone else to direct it.
Lucas went to his closest director friend, Steven Spielberg, and asked him if he wanted to come over and direct the prequel series. Spielberg had previously worked with Lucas, as they created the Indiana Jones movie franchise together. According to Ron Howard, Lucas also approached him and Robert Zemeckis, too.
Howard said all three directors turned it down because it was “too daunting.” Spielberg took it one step further when he told his friend that the only person who should direct the prequels was the man who loved the franchise above any other. George Lucas finally returned to the director’s chair and took on all three movies.
David Fincher – The Force Awakens
When it was time to start the sequel trilogy, one of the first directors the studio went to was David Fincher. He was already successful with Fight Club, Seven, and Zodiac. However, he also directed an Alien movie that he considers one of the worst experiences of his career. He chose not to do it again with Star Wars.
Fincher explained why he turned down the opportunity to direct The Force Awakens. “That’s a whole other level. One is that you have to endure the withering abuse of Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher, and the other is you have to live up to a billion or a billion-five, and that becomes its own kind of pressure.”
Fincher also said that it would have been 14 hours a day, seven days a week, for two years of his life, and he wasn’t willing to dedicate that much of his attention to the film.
Matthew Vaughn – The Force Awakens
A second name Lucasfilm spoke with about Star Wars: The Force Awakens was Matthew Vaughn. However, unlike Fincher, Vaughn planned to accept the offer. Vaughn, who had directed X-Men: First Class, even dropped out of X-Men: Days of Future Past to make the Star Wars movie.
However, Lucasfilm instead brought in J.J. Abrams to direct the first movie in the sequel trilogy. According to Vaugn, Luacasfilm considered him a “maverick,” and that is why he wasn’t hired. Instead, Vaughn moved on to the Kingsman franchise, and every film he has directed since then has been part of that universe.
Vaughn has since said he would still love to direct a Star Wars movie, but he also claimed in a 2021 interview that the franchise was “decimated.” If he did accept the opportunity, he said, “I would be meticulous on trying to protect the legacy of something that I fell in love with movies for.“
Colin Trevorrow – Episode IX
The Star Wars sequels almost looked a lot different when Colin Trevorrow was hired to direct the last movie in the franchise. Trevorrow was hired to replace Rian Johnson after The Last Jedi, thanks to the polarizing response to Johnson’s film. However, things didn’t work out very well for Trevorrow.
Trevorrow was on a high after directing the highly successful Jurassic World and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. The movie, at the time tentatively titled Star Wars: Duel of the Fates, saw the director work on the script, but when he turned it in, Lucasfilm was unsatisfied with the story and fired him.
Instead, J.J. Abrams returned to direct his second Star Wars installment, and it ended up as one of the worst-reviewed movies in the sequel trilogy.
Phil Lord & Chris Miller – Solo: A Star Wars Story
Lucasfilm was working on standalone films in the Star Wars franchise, and after the immense success of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, they set out to make Solo: A Star Wars Story. For the latter movie, the studio hired Phil Lord and Chris Miller to direct the Han Solo origin story.
Lord and Miller had become extremely sought-after directors after the comedy reboot of 21 Jump Street and the shockingly successful LEGO Movie. The directors began working on the film, but after five months of shooting, Lucasfilm fired Lord and Miller due to creative differences, and they brought in Ron Howard instead.
Despite Ron Howard being a spectacular director, Solo received lukewarm reviews, underperformed at the box office, and ended the slate of standalone movies. Meanwhile, Lord and Miller went on to make Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, which was a major success for Sony.
Zack Snyder – Untitled Film
After the sequel series ended, Lucasfilm began to focus on Disney+ streaming shows and put the movies on hold. However, the company never stopped looking to the future and spoke with some big-name directors on possible movie ideas. One of these directors was Zack Snyder, who was coming off his run in the DCEU.
According to Zack Snyder, he told Lucasfilm that he planned to “fix” the Star Wars franchise with the movie he was pitching to them. However, his pitch proved too much for Lucasfilm. “They’re down for an R-rated movie for one, and it’s gonna be like some Jedi going nuts,” Snyder said about his pitch.
Lucasfilm wanted nothing to do with an R-rated Star Wars film, and Snyder took his idea and rewrote it before releasing it as Rebel Moon, a Netflix original sci-fi movie. That film was a critical disappointment, so it might be better that it wasn’t the direction he would lead the Star Wars franchise.
Guillermo Del Toro – Jabba The Hutt Spinoff
One of the most shocking bits of news about rejected Star Wars movies by big-name directors involved Guillermo del Toro. The director of Pan’s Labyrinth, Pacific Rim, Hellboy, and 2025’s Frankenstein had a big idea for a standalone movie. He wanted to tell the story of Jabba the Hutt.
According to Del Toro, his idea would have been to make an almost gangster movie with Jabba the Hutt as the primary character. “I would love to do a Jabba the Hutt Scarface, his ascension in the crime family,” Del Toro explained. Del Toro also said he loved the character and that the movie would show his rise and fall.
Sadly, this project was canceled, and Del Toro lost his chance when Lucasfilm ended its anthology projects. That makes it sound like it was part of the deal that ended after Solo’s box-office struggles.
Steven Soderbergh – Ben Solo Movie
The latest news on big-name directors who didn’t get the chance to make a Star Wars movie came from Adam Driver’s recent interviews. While the sequel series was polarizing and Rise of Skywalker was a disappointment, Adam Driver said he loved his character, Kylo Ren, and would return with a good director.
It sounded like he found the director in Steven Soderbergh, and they came up with an idea called The Hunt for Ben Solo. After breaking things down, they took the script idea to Lucasfilm, and reportedly, the studio loved it as well. They then went to Disney, which immediately rejected it.
According to Driver, the studio didn’t understand how Kylo Ren could have survived in Rise of Skywalker and didn’t want to take a risk on the movie. It seems absurd that Lucasfilm greenlit the script with a director of Soderbergh’s talent involved, and Disney rejected it outright, but in the world of Star Wars, anything is possible.
