J.J. Abrams is moving on from Star Wars after the release of The Force Awakens, while Rian Johnson will take the helm of Episode VIII and Colin Trevorrow has signed up for Episode IX.
On the spinoff front, Gareth Edwards is currently hard at work on Star Wars: Rogue One and Phil Lord and Chris Miller are taking charge of a solo outing for the young Han Solo. In fact, the only Star Wars movie without a director is the one Josh Trank was supposed to direct!
Could that have a female director at the helm? The franchise has always been something of a boys club; Leigh Brackett initially worked on The Empire Strikes Back, but her screenplay was discarded shortly after her death, and despite the fact that Carrie Fisher was asked to take a look at The Phantom Menace’s script, she was never actually credited for doing so.
Well, the Los Angeles Times reports that after a two-day summit held by Women in Film and the Sundance Institute to address the gender gap in Hollywood, Adriana Alberghetti (an agent at William Morris Endeavor) held meetings with four female directors and three female writers in regards to them potentially working on a Star Wars movie in the near future.
While none of the women are named, Alberghetti represtents the likes of Sarah Gavron (Suffragette) and S.J. Clarkson (Jessica Jones), Linda Woolverton (Maleficent), and Marti Noxon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer), so there’s a lot of great talent to choose from there.
What happens with this remains to be seen, but Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy recently explained why they haven’t already found a female director. “I had not had one single phone call from a woman telling me that she really, really wants to direct a ‘Star Wars’ movie. They need to be the ones picking up the phone and saying, ‘Hey, let me tell you what ‘Star Wars’ means to me and how much I could do with it.’” Here’s hoping that changes!
