Boba Fett Movie: Director Reveals Why This Star Wars Spin-Off Didn't Happen

Back in 2015, at Disney's annual Star Wars Celebration event, director Josh Trank, hot from his massive indie success Chronicle, was scheduled to take the stage. Disney and Lucasfilm were going to announce a new Star Wars spin-off movie centered around the fan-favorite bounty hunter Boba Fett, and Trank was going to direct it. Only that announcement never came. There have been rumors over the years about what happened, but Trank has finally revealed in concrete terms exactly why the Boba Fett movie never jetpacked off the ground.

In a detailed and sprawling profile over at Polygon, Trank claims he quit the Boba Fett movie because he was sure that Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy was about to fire him due to the well-publicized turmoil surrounding production on Trank's Fantastic Four film. "I quit because I knew I was going to be fired if I didn’t quit," Trank said.

According to Polygon, "whispers of the [Fantastic Four] turmoil reached Disney and Kathleen Kennedy at Lucasfilm. No one had seen the cut of Fantastic Four that would arrive in theaters (including Trank), but the he-said-she-said dispute was enough to shake her confidence. Trank said he and Kennedy agreed that the director should sit out his scheduled appearance at the 2015 Star Wars Celebration in April, but even then, he couldn't pick the conversation back up ... Trank told his managers he wouldn't do Star Wars and wouldn't look for more blockbuster work. Days later, the trades announced that the director was 'fired' off his Star Wars movie."

Trank's first film, Chronicle, was a critical and commercial success, an indie sci-fi/superhero mash-up that captured Hollywood's attention. Of all the projects available to him, Trank chose Fantastic Four, though exactly why isn't clear--based on Polygon's profile, it seems he was never particularly enthused about adapting comic books. It sounds like he's a much bigger Star Wars fan, though, so it would have been interesting to see his take on Boba Fett.

Instead, we're getting Capone, which stars Tom Hardy and arrives on VOD May 12.