May the director be with you: Who’ll replace Lucas?
LOS ANGELES — Three more Star Wars movies are planned but who will direct them?
When George Lucas announced he was selling Lucasfilm to Disney, he also revealed that three more episodes were in the works. Fans began tossing around names of directors who’d be a good fit for this revered material:
J.J. Abrams: His sci-fi bona fides were already beyond reproach, and he solidified them with his reimagining of the Star Trek franchise in 2009. His sequel Star Trek Into Darkness is due out next year.
Joss Whedon: He has a welldeserved and loyal following among sci-fi fans between Firefly and Serenity, but he catapulted himself into a whole ’nother stratosphere with this summer’s enormous hit The Avengers. Thing is, he may be just a tad busy with The Avengers 2 — due out in 2015.
Brad Bird: He directed the most recent and best film in the Mission: Impossible series, last year’s Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol. He used his animation expertise from the beloved Pixar films The Incredibles and Ratatouille to make a live-action movie that was lively and thrillingly staged.
Jon Favreau: He’s a massive Star Wars fan and is extremely knowledgeable about Lucas and his life. He’s also shown he can manipulate the kind of massive machinery it takes to make a blockbuster with the hugely successful Iron Man movies.
Christopher Nolan: Dark Knight. ’Nuff said.
Peter Jackson: He’s built gigantic franchises with rabid fan bases with the Lord of the Rings trilogy. But the last of his three Hobbit movies comes out in 2014. He might already be kinda wiped out at this point.
David Fincher: A virtuoso filmmaker mostly known for drama, but his remake of the Swedish hit The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo was heart-poundingly thrilling, and The Social Network and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” showcased his mastery of specialeffects trickery.
Sam Mendes: This might seem like an odd choice until you see Skyfall this weekend. And you really should. But the American Beauty director said the whole experience of making a James Bond movie left him “knackered,” so who knows whether he’d be up for such a massive undertaking so soon.
Matt Reeves: He directed Cloverfield which showed he has an eye for visceral sci-fi action. But Let Me In, his English-language version of the Swedish vampire thriller Let the Right One In, revealed his ability to create a chilly, tense mood.
Ben Affleck: Argo proved he’s a major filmmaker and showed he could step deftly from the intimate drama of Gone Baby Gone and The Town into much a larger and more complicated project.