The “Lost” showrunner said that he wanted to “do the Protestant Reformation inside “Star Wars,” but “it didn’t work.”

Damon Lindelof reveals details about his scrapped Star Wars film, says it would’ve tackled nostalgia

The "Lost" showrunner said that he wanted to "do the Protestant Reformation inside "Star Wars," but "it didn't work."

By Wesley Stenzel

Wesley Stenzel

Wesley Stenzel is a news writer at **. He began writing for EW in 2022.

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May 20, 2026 9:10 p.m. ET

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Damon Lindelof in New York City on Oct. 4, 2019; Daisy Ridley in 'Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker'. Credit:

Ilya S. Savenok/Getty; J Wilson/Lucasfilm/Disney

- Damon Lindelof said that he was "fired" from a *Star Wars* film after two years of development.

- The *Lost *showrunner said that his movie was about a "force of nostalgia" and a "force of revision."

- Lindelof said that the writing process on the film was "really hard" and "slow."

Damon Lindelof is sharing new information about his brief foray into the *Star Wars* universe.

The *Lost* and *Watchmen *showrunner, who previously penned sci-fi franchise movies like *Prometheus* and *Star Trek Into Darkness*, discussed the unmade *Star Wars* project that he spent two years developing.

"I was fired off of a *Star Wars* movie," Lindelof said during a broader conversation about the state of the franchise with the *House of R* podcast. "They asked me, 'What do you think a *Star Wars* movie should be?' And I said, 'Here's what it should be.' And they said, 'Great, you're hired.' And then two years later, I was fired."

** has reached out to Lucasfilm for comment.

Damon Lindelof in Los Angeles on April 15, 2023.

Randy Shropshire/Deadline via Getty

Lindelof explained that he and his creative partners on the project, Justin Britt-Gibson and Rayna McClendon, wanted their *Star Wars* film to include meta-commentary about nostalgia and evolution.

"What we were attempting to do was to have this conversation in the movie, which is to say, there is a force of nostalgia and there is a force of revision, and they are at odds with one another," he explained. "And let's do the Protestant Reformation inside *Star Wars*. And it didn't work."

Lindelof doesn't think that his superiors at Lucasfilm objected to the idea behind his project. "That didn't feel necessarily that risky," he said. "They seemed to like the premise."

Instead, he thinks that he "may have been fired" for other complicating factors, noting that he felt that he wasn't writing quickly enough. "The writing was really hard, it was slow — the tone, getting it right," he said, adding that he struggled with "where it was inside of the canon, what its relationship was with to *Episode IX*, is it starting a new trilogy?"

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The screenwriter said that the *Star Wars *films are "so massive" and "so big" that redirecting the trajectory of the franchise can take an extraordinary amount of time and effort.

"It's the old sort of like tanker equation, which is, you turn the wheel and it takes five minutes before it turns a little bit," he said. "We're looking for the center of *Star Wars*, and when *Episode VII* came out, we all knew what it was. It was Rey and it was Finn and it was Poe and it was like all these, and then we were migrating back in, Luke and Leia and Han and Chewie and all those guys.”

John Boyega, Daisy Ridley, and Oscar Isaac in 'Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker'.

Lindelof said that it was difficult to locate the franchise's center after Disney's sequel trilogy wrapped with *The Rise of Skywalker* in 2019. "We've got the sense that when this new trilogy is over, we are going to be launching with these new characters and that was the center of *Star Wars*," he said, explaining that he doesn't know if the characters from *The Mandalorian* are now the primary figures in a galaxy far, far away. "The new question is: are Mando and Grogu the center of *Star Wars* now?"

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Lindelof's *Star Wars* project was announced in 2022, with Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy (*Ms. Marvel*) set to direct the film. *Variety* reported in 2023 that Lindelof and Britt-Gibson had exited the top-secret project, with Steven Knight (*Peaky Blinders*) penning a new screenplay for the movie. Shortly thereafter, Lindelof said that he was "asked to leave" the franchise, and said that he wished the creative team "the best of luck" on the film.

You can listen to Lindelof's full appearance on *House of R* above.

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