When Lucasfilm announced last month that Star Wars: The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson will be working on a Star Wars trilogy that will be separate from the Skywalker saga, fans immediately started throwing out speculation about what these new movies could be about. Among the more popular guess was that this trilogy will turn back the clock and explore the Old Republic era, i.e. events that unfolded in the Star Wars galaxy several millennia before the "current" movies. Well, you can cross that idea off the list, as Johnson has confirmed that this Star Wars trilogy will not be any kind of Old Republic tale. Noting how much fans love the video games that covered this era, Johnson said the following:
Oh, they love Knights of the Old Republic. I played that game when it first came out and it was like, god, I loved it. Yeah, that's a fantastic game. And I understand it, the instinct to automatically go to something that you know and love, that you've already seen...To me, what's really fun is the notion of what new stuff are we gonna see, what new stories can we tell?
So lucky for all those Star Wars fans out there who enjoyed playing the original Knights of the Old Republic video game duology that came out last decade, Rian Johnson shares your enthusiasm, at least for the first game. But as a subject for these new Star Wars installments, the director made it clear to Mashable that this particular source material wasn't compelling enough. That's not to say that the Old Republic era couldn't be explored in a different area of Star Wars media. Since the Knights of the Old Republic video games and The Old Republic MMORPG follow-up were made non-canon in 2014 along with nearly every other Star Wars novel, comic book and video game released up to that point, that means the slate's been wiped clean, and brand-new Old Republic stories could be told as part of the official canon. But if you were looking forward to watching hordes of Jedi and Sith battle each other thousands of years ago on the big screen, you'll need to make peace with that not happening.
Along with it branching off from the Skywalker saga, the only other thing we know about Rian Johnson's Star Wars trilogy is that it will introduce new characters in a corner of the Star Wars galaxy that hasn't been explored before. Since thousands of years in the past is off the table, we'll just have to keep guessing on where Johnson plans to take us (I suspect these movies will explore the Unknown Regions). Along with "shepherding" this Star Wars trilogy, Johnson will write and direct the first installment.
Keep checking with CinemaBlend for more new on the development of this new Star Wars trilogy. In the meantime, The Last Jedi opens on December 15 (don't forget to pre-order your tickets), and Episode IX will conclude the current trilogy on December 20, 2019.
