Simon Kinberg has made a career out of his involvement in sci-fi and other genre franchises including writing and producing a number of the “X-Men” films along with the scripts for such films as “Sherlock Holmes,” “Jumper” and “Mr. and Mrs. Smith”.
More recently, he created, wrote and executive produced the Apple TV+ sci-fi series “Invasion” which recently launched its second season. As part of the promotion of that, he spoke with Polygon in a long-ranging interview covering his influences.
He also was asked about his role in the “Star Wars” franchise. He says around a decade ago he, Lawrence Kasdan and Michael Arndt spent a couple of weeks up at Skywalker Ranch in a “kind of mini writers room” where they would “break ideas and stories and brainstorm”.
Then each was to go off and write their own film – Arndt wrote and later Kasdan re-wrote “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” Kasdan wrote what would become “Solo: A Star Wars Story,” and Kinberg went off to write the Boba Fett movie that was ultimately scrapped before it went into production.
That would’ve focused on Boba Fett during the original trilogy and had Josh Trank briefly attached to helm before he exited over creative differences with Kinberg. Asked about the discussion that his pitch was more hard sci-fi than the usual sci-fi fantasy, Kinberg says:
“I mean, it’s all pretty sci-fi, but I think ‘hard’ is the right word. Tonally like Logan. On the edge of R-rated, though I don’t think you’d have a Star Wars movie that could be R-rated.”
He adds over time his role with the “Star Wars” franchise changed to “being a consultant on the movies, give thoughts, notes, sometimes actual pages for scripts, and obviously co-creating ‘Star Wars Rebels’ and really staying with that show that I loved.”
“Invasion” is currently available on the Apple TV+ service.
