Star Wars: The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson “got spooked by the online negativity” while considering his future with the franchise, according to outgoing Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy.

In a Deadline interview published alongside the news of her departure, Kennedy suggested that Johnson was put off continuing early plans with Lucasfilm for him to produce his own Star Wars trilogy, following the intense online backlash to The Last Jedi.

It’s a notable admission from Kennedy, especially after numerous interviews with Johnson and others previously blamed the filmmaker’s work on hit Netflix murder mystery movie series Knives Out as the main reason why he was now too busy to continue on Star Wars. Kennedy mentions Knives Out too, but then goes further — describing the online response to The Last Jedi as “the rough part.”

“Once he made the Netflix deal and went off to start doing the Knives Out films, that has occupied a huge amount of his time,” Kennedy began when asked why Johnson had not yet returned. “That’s the other thing that happens here. After Shawn [Levy, now the director of Star Wars: Starfighter] and I started talking about Star Wars, Stranger Things kicks in and he was completely consumed for a while by that. That’s what happened with Rian.

“And then I do believe he got spooked by the online negativity,” she continued. “I think Rian made one of the best Star Wars movies. He’s a brilliant filmmaker and he got spooked. This is the rough part. When people come into this space, I have every filmmaker and actors say to me, ‘What’s going to happen?’ They’re a little scared.”

Lucasfilm initially announced plans for Johnson to write and direct his own Star Wars trilogy, separate to the franchise’s main Skywalker Saga. But as the years have worn on — and numerous other Star Wars projects have fizzled out or been placed on the back burner — it has become increasingly clear this trilogy will never materialize.

Speaking only last month, Johnson said he had intended The Last Jedi to be a film that “shook the box” in order to upend fan expectations, rather than simply serve up another movie that handled the franchise and its audience with “kid gloves” — something other entries in Disney’s Star Wars sequel trilogy have also been accused of.

“I was hoping for that — I wasn’t afraid of it per se,” Johnson told Polygon in December 2025. “Having grown up a Star Wars fan, I know that thing where something challenges it, and I know the recoil against that. I know how there can be infighting in the world of Star Wars. But I also know that the worst sin is to handle it with kid gloves.”

Kennedy leaves her role as the boss of Lucasfilm with two Star Wars films now in post-production: this year’s The Mandalorian and Grogu, a spinoff from the hit Disney+ TV series, and the standalone Ryan Gosling-starring Star Wars: Starfighter, due in 2027. As part of the same exit interview, Kennedy also mentioned the now-abandoned plans to make a Ben Solo movie starring Adam Driver, stating that “anything’s a possibility if somebody’s willing to take a risk.”

Image credit: Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images.

Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social