Comscan No. 6: I'm Glad They Keep Canceling Star Wars Movies

Plus Thrawn takes over ESPN; Thrawn takes over my wallet

I hope she got to keep the helmet.

One funny thing about the scrapped Guillermo del Toro Jabba the Hutt film is how much it sounds like a joke. Another is how little I care that it’s not happening.

Guillermo del Toro probably would have been the best director to ever make a Star Wars movie. (It’s not a long list and GDT would be the second person to come to the franchise with a Best Director Oscar after Ron Howard, who took over Solo.) I love Jabba the Hutt. One of my most fervent wishes for Disney-era Star Wars was that they rebuild the Jabba puppet bigger, better, and more textured than ever before. Yet, I cannot for the life of me muster a single shred of disappointment about the news that this movie could have happened, but didn’t. Why?

Maybe I don’t care about the canceled Jabba biopic because none of these movies seem real. They’ve greenlit and abandoned so many projects that the announcements barely register anymore. Here is a likely incomplete list of scrapped projects to date, some announced an some just rumored:

• Guillermo del Toro’s Jabba the Hutt movie

• Josh Trank’s Boba Fett movie

• James Mangold’s Boba Fett movie

• David Benioff and D.B. Weiss’s trilogy

• Patty Jenkins’ Rogue Squadron movie

• Stephen Daldry’s Obi-Wan trilogy

• Kevin Feige’s movie

• J.D. Dillard’s movie

• Damon Lindelof’s “Old Rey” movie

• Lord and Miller’s version of Solo

• Colin Trevorrow’s Episode IX: Duel of the Fates

• Rian Johnson’s trilogy???

• Star Wars Detours

• Rangers of the New Republic

As bizarre and self-defeating as Kathleen Kennedy’s zeal for scuttling her own projects seems, I support it! Better to have someone with a quick trigger finger in the big seat. Whatever you think of the Disney-era Lucasfilm output, at least there’s an idea of the brand they’re set on defending and maintaining.

Still, I want to see that Rian Johnson trilogy and that Damon Lindelof 60-year-old-Rey movie. I love The Last Jedi and the Watchmen HBO show. The rest of that stuff can stay in the vault.

This is Thrawncenter

Just when I thought I was the biggest Thrawn fan that watches multiple NHL games a night, ESPN host Arda Öcal showed up to work dressed as the blue guy for Halloween.

I want to know how big a fan we’re dealing with here, though. Is this just corporate-mandated brand synergy? We didn’t get an Eli Vanto reference in Ahsoka. Can we get one during a Minnesota Wild highlight?

I need to borrow $255

I’m not a huge Star Wars toy collector. (I do have a handful of bootleg fake-vintage, Kenner-style figures.) But I’ll make an exception for Sideshow’s new Thrawn.

Sorry, folks, this is the financial crisis that makes this newsletter switch to a paid-subscription model. Just kidding…haha…maybe?!?

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