Rian Johnson will live, but sadly, if he can't make his Star Wars trilogy

Rian Johnson is riding high on the acclaim of his Knives Out series (Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery just racked up a handful of Critics Choice Awards nominations). Benoit Blanc looms so large now that it almost makes one forget the director’s previous pop culture claim to fame, being the guy who made one of the most controversial Star Wars installments, The Last Jedi. But Johnson hasn’t forgotten, and he’s still thinking about that potential standalone trilogy he’s supposed to make.

“It wouldn’t be the end of the world for anyone” if the trilogy didn’t come to pass, Johnson tells Insider, “But I would be sad. I love the world. I love the people. I love Star Wars fans. I love the passion of how they engage in it, there’s nothing like telling a story in this world and then experiencing people truly connecting to it and letting you know that. It’s extraordinary.”

“So I’m hoping I get to do it again, but nothing is the end of the world until the end of the world actually happens,” he adds, “which, what day of the week is it?”

Given Johnson’s Knives Out hot streak—and, for better or worse, TLJ’s enduring legacy—it seems a no-brainer to hand him the reigns once again. Yet he’s one of many filmmakers (like Taika Waititi and Patty Jenkins) who has been announced on a Star Wars project, and many of those projects have since fallen to the wayside. Nothing seems guaranteed on the franchise’s theatrical side. (The television side, meanwhile, is thriving.)

Luckily, Johnson has Knives Out to keep him busy. “I want it to be in America,” he teases of the next installment. “There’s a lot of tempting things of going to—Paris or the Alps—but I feel it’s really important that these are American movies. Even with Glass Onion, it’s set overseas but it’s a group of Americans who are trapped on an island together, so bringing it back to somewhere a little closer to home I think could be a good thing for the next one.” As opposed to a galaxy far, far away.