Guillermo del Toro recently shared that he was once working on a Star Wars film project that he never got to actually make. He was working on that film with screenwriter David S. Goyer (Blade, Foundation). The director offered a cryptic tease of what the film entailed by only mentioning the letters “J” and “BB.”
I initially thought this was the Jabba the Hutt gangster movie that Del Toro talked about wanting to make several years ago, and it turns out… that’s exactly what it was! During a Q&A with Collider, the filmmaker shared:
“We had the rise and fall of Jabba the Hutt, so I was super happy. We were doing a lot of stuff, and then it’s not my property, it’s not my money, and then it’s one of those 30 screenplays that goes away.”
When talking about how he felt after the project was scrapped by Lucasfilm, he said:
“Sometimes I’m bitter, sometimes I’m not. I always turn to my team and say, ‘Good practice, guys. Good practice. We designed a great world. We designed great stuff. We learned.’ You can never be ungrateful with life. Whatever life sends you, there’s something to be learned from it. So, you know, I trust the universe, I do. When something doesn’t happen, I go, ‘Why?’ I try to have a dialogue with myself. ‘Why didn’t it happen?’ And the more you swim upstream with the universe, the less you’re gonna realize where you’re going.”
While Del Toro didn’t reveal any additional details about the movie during the Q&A, he did talk about it years ago:
“I would do the sort of Godfather saga that Jabba the Hutt had to go through to gain control. One, because it’s the character that looks the most like me, and I like him. I love the idea of a Hutt type of mafia, a very complex coup. I just love the character.”
I would’ve liked to see Del Toro get to make this Star Wars movie. I bet it would’ve turned out great! But, it obviously just wasn’t meant to be.
