Back in November, the Los Angeles Times reported that Man of Steel and 300 director Zack Snyder said he had no interest in directing the hotly anticipated seventh Star Wars film. But Vulture has learned that while this may be specifically true — he won’t be doing Episode VII — it was a bit of misdirection: He is in fact developing a Star Wars project for Lucasfilm that is set within the series’ galaxy, though parallel to the next trilogy. It will be an as-yet-untitled Jedi epic loosely based on Akira Kurosawa’s 1954 classic Seven Samurai, with the ronin and katana being replaced by the Force-wielding knights and their iconic lightsabers. (Go ahead, say it — you know you want to: “ … an elegant weapon, for a more civilized age.” Felt good, didn’t it?)
It’s not clear just where Snyder’s untitled Jedi film would fall within the Star Wars chronology, but one insider expects it will not be considered part of the “numbered” episodes, but rather a stand-alone film set sometime post–Episode VI events, meaning the next phase of the franchise development is much broader than previously thought. For those unfamiliar, Kurosawa’s influential Seven Samurai (The Magnificent Seven was the American remake) tells the tale of a small agrarian town in seventeenth-century Japan that’s routinely pillaged by bandits. Fed up with the annual shakedown, its farmers retain the services of seven masterless samurai to defend their harvest. George Lucas has cited the classic as one of his favorites, telling the Telegraph in 2005 that “it’s a brilliant, brilliant film, and every time I see it I can't believe the magic mixture of a great story and great acting and humour and action and suspense — wonderful cinema. The art of moving pictures is on every frame of this movie."
Vulture.com
Urm, whaaaat????
EDIT: Thinking about it, could this be what Kasdan is involved with instead of VIII/IX?
