Not that long ago in this galaxy, Guillermo del Toro hoped to make a Star Wars movie. The Oscar-winning director wanted to tell a story about the franchise’s notorious crime lord Jabba the Hutt. It’s one of the great “what ifs” in Star Wars history. The film would have featured one of Hollywood’s best filmmakers exploring a truly iconic character in-depth. What would that have looked like? Sadly we’ll never know, but in a recent interview del Toro offered new insights into what he had planned for Tatooine’s larger-than-life gangster.
During a recent sit down with Collider Guillermo del Toro discussed his scrapped Jabba the Hutt project. He said his movie would have covered “the rise and fall” of Return of the Jedi‘s crime boss. The director also said his team “designed a great world” full of “great stuff” del Toro was very happy with.
What that all means exactly will remain the stuff of dreams for now and possibly forever. We don’t have to guess nearly as much as to why the feature film never went into development, though. Del Toro said ultimately it didn’t happen because “it’s not my property, it’s not my money, and then it’s one of those 30 screenplays that goes away.”
Translation: Lucasfilm didn’t like it enough to go into production.
How much of the studio’s decision had to do with the reaction to the franchise’s other standalone films at the time? Had Solo done better at the box office would del Toro’s Jabba the Hutt movie have happened? The director isn’t sweating it. He said when he tries to answer why his movie never moved forward he tells himself, “The more you swim upstream with the universe, the less you’re gonna realize where you’re going.”
That’s a great attitude for him. (And probably also Jabba, but for a different reason. We imagine the Hutt was not a great swimmer.) But that doesn’t make us feel better about what could have been. We wish every galaxy in the universe got to see del Toro’s Star Wars movie.