Guillermo del Toro’s Axed ‘Star Wars’ Movie Was ‘The Rise and Fall of Jabba the Hutt’: I Was ‘Super Happy,’ but ‘It’s Not My Property, Not My Money’

Guillermo del Toro sent “Star Wars” fans into a tizzy in late September when he confirmed on social media that he was once planning a trip to a galaxy far, far, away as the director of a “Star Wars” movie. The Oscar winner provided no further details at the time, but he’s now confirmed to Collider’s Steven Weintraub that his axed “Star Wars” movie centered on Jabba the Hutt. Considering del Toro’s love of monsters, it’s hardly a surprise he’d pick Jabba as the focal point for his own “Star Wars” movie.

“We had the rise and fall of Jabba the Hutt, so I was super happy,” del Toro said. “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. 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,” he later added about his “Star Wars” film being axed. “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.”

David S. Goyer, the screenwriter best known for penning superhero movies such as “Batman Begins,” “Man of Steel” and more, first revealed the existence of del Toro’s scrapped “Star Wars” movie onthe “Happy Sad Confused” podcast. He said that “a lot of cool art work” was produced for it.

“I wrote an un-produced ‘Star Wars’ movie that Guillermo del Toro was going to direct. That was about four years ago,” Goyer said at the time. “There was a lot of behind the scenes stuff going on at Lucasfilm at the time. It’s a cool script… you have to ask him about it.”

Del Toro then shared Goyer’s interview on X/Twitter and added: “True. Can’t say much. Maybe two letters ‘J’ and ‘BB’ is that three letters?” The director’s post led “Star Wars” fans to theorize on what these letters might mean, with some correctly guessing Jabba the Hutt at the time.

Goyer also revealed that he started work on a second “Star Wars” project, a “script treatment for an origins of the Jedi movie that takes place 25,000 years before the first ‘Star Wars’ film.” While Goyer ultimately parted ways with Lucasfilm, a Jedi origin movie isnow currently in developmentfrom “Logan” and “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” director James Mangold. He’s described the pitch as a biblical epic about the dawn of the Force.

Mangold’s film is one of three “Star Wars” movies in active development. Another, from Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, is a sequel to “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker” that follows Rey (Daisy Ridley) as she trains a new Jedi order. And a third, from “Star Wars” favorite Dave Filoni, will close out the interconnected stories being told on the Disney+ series “The Mandalorian,” “The Book of Boba Fett” and “Ahsoka.”