It's been well documented that Guillermo del Toro (Blade II, Hellboy, The Shape of Water) is a huge Star Wars fan, and the filmmaker has spoken in the past about being in contact with Lucasfilm about potentially taking the helm of a movie set in the Galaxy Far, Far Away.
Here's what the fan-favorite director had to say when asked about his desire to helm a Star Wars film during a 2017 interview with Collider.
“In 2006, Mike Fleming at Deadline wrote an article that said ‘Guillermo del Toro is busy until 2012’ and he published 20 things I was maybe doing. Since then I haven’t been able to live down that. Every time I say ‘good morning’ somebody says ‘Guillermo is doing Good Morning!’, so I will not comment on this… I look like a kook. Neil Gaiman once said, ‘I would like to write ‘Doctor Strange’ with Guillermo’ then all of a sudden in IMDb I had ‘Doctor Strange’ [listed].”
Del Toro did share the following caveat, however.
"I will say there’s some characters that are great, and I have talked to Kathleen Kennedy and John Knoll about ideas.”
Now, writer Davis Goyer has revealed that he penned an "unproduced Star Wars movie that Guillermo del Toro was gonna direct" while chatting to the Happy Sad Confused podcast, and while he didn't provide any details, del Toro did share the following response via X (Twitter).
What could those letter represent? Well, "J" might, and probably does, stand for Jedi, but "BB" is a little more difficult to decipher. Some fans have guessed BB-8 from the Star Wars sequels, but that seems highly unlikely.
Del Toro may give us a little more to go on at some point, but for now, be sure to share your own theories with us in the comments section below.
Whatever this story would have entailed, Star Wars fans will surely all agree that Lucasfilm missed a major opportunity by not allowing the filmmaker to see his mysterious project to fruition.
If you're interested, you can check out the Roll Credits podcast lads' ranking of all eleven Star Wars movies below.
"The original 1977 Star Wars film, retroactively subtitled Episode IV: A New Hope, was followed by the sequels Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Episode VI: Return of the Jedi (1983), forming the original Star Wars trilogy. Lucas later returned to the series to direct a prequel trilogy, consisting of Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999), Episode II: Attack of the Clones (2002), and Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (2005). In 2012, George Lucas sold his production company to Disney, relinquishing his ownership of the franchise. This led to a sequel trilogy, consisting of Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Episode VIII: The Last Jedi (2017), and Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker (2019).
All nine films, collectively referred to as the "Skywalker Saga", were nominated for Academy Awards, with wins going to the first two releases. Together with the theatrical live action "anthology" films Rogue One (2016) and Solo (2018), the combined box office revenue of the films equated to over US$10 billion, making Star Wars the third-highest-grossing film franchise of all time."