Damon Lindelof Calls Picketing at Disney “More Fun Than Writing a Star Wars Movie”

Lindelof and co-writer Justin Britt-Gibson spoke about the movie amid the WGA strike.

The WGA and SAG-AFTRA continue to be on strike, with both the writers and actors unions campaigning for big changes in Hollywood. The WGA strike, in particular, has now been in effect for over 100 days — and one union member has a unique outlook on the situation. Damon Lindelof, who previously worked on beloved shows like Watchmen and Lost, recently spoke with The Hollywood Reporter while picketing outside of Disney’s Burbank, California offices. Lindelof spoke about the Star Wars movie that he was briefly attached to co-write alongside Justin Britt-Gibson, and argued that the experience of picketing on the strike “is a lot more fun” than writing that movie.

“Ninety-nine days of steps under my belt and I don’t know if there’s any end in sight, but I’m feeling good, strong, convinced and unified,” Lindelof revealed. “Justin and I wrote a Star Wars movie together and picketing Disney is a lot more fun than writing a Star Wars movie.”

“This will not be in vain,” Britt-Gibson added. “This will be done so we have a better future for writers, for actors, for everybody out here on the line. … Strike the Empire back!”

What Was Damon Lindelof’s Star Wars Movie About?

The next Star Wars blockbuster is expected to be the currently-untitled movie from Ms. Marvel director Sharmeed Obaid-Chinoy, which will see the return of Daisy Ridley as Rey. Earlier this year, it was revealed that Lindelof and Britt-Gibson had both departed the project, with Peaky Blinders’ Stephen Knight brought on to rewrite the script. Lindelof and Britt-Gibson’s version of the film would have reportedly been set sixty years after Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, and followed a much older version of Rey.

“I will just say, that for reasons that I can’t get into on this Sunday morning, on this day, the degree of difficulty is extremely, extremely, extremely high. If it can’t be great, it shouldn’t exist,” Lindelof recently admitted to /Film about his project. “That’s all I’ll say, because I have the same association with it as you do, which is, it’s the first movie I saw sitting in my dad’s lap, four years old, May of ’77. I think it’s possible that sometimes when you hold something in such high reverence and esteem, you start to get in the kitchen and you just go, ‘Maybe I shouldn’t be cooking. Maybe I should just be eating.’ We’ll just leave it at that point.”

What Will Be the Next Star Wars Movie?

In addition to the film directed by Obaid-Chinoy, Lucasfilm also announced plans for a currently-untitled film from Dave Filoni culminating much of the canon of the Star Wars TV shows, as well as a film from James Mangold about the origins of the very first Jedi.

“Jon [Favreau] and I have our own little theater that we’ve been playing in, but Star Wars is a big galaxy. I think there’s a lot of possibilities, but we do things our own way,” Filoni told ComicBook.com earlier this year. “I think of, you know, A New Hope is an important moment in the timeline. The Death Star blows up. That changes everything … A cinematic moment for this time period has to be a moment that’s changing things and we understand it as the audience and then it can ripple down if we have other shows going on underneath that. So if there was a show taking place in the New Hope time period that you were watching as a kid, you would understand that things have changed in the show because the Death Star blew up. But they didn’t necessarily need to be there. So there’s a ton of possibilities for how to tell these stories in a unique way for Star Wars as well.” 

What do you think of Damon Lindelof’s new comments about his Star Wars movie? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!