The screenwriter behind the upcoming Star Wars: Starfighter says that working closely with its star fundamentally changed how the film was written.
Jonathan Tropper, who also created Apple TV's Lucky and ran the series Your Friends & Neighbors, told Deadline that Ryan Gosling's presence became a direct influence on the script. "He would offhandedly say things; I knew that would make its way into the movie," Tropper said of Gosling. "His voice gets in your head."
Tropper landed the Starfighter job through his longstanding relationship with director Shawn Levy. "I was fortunate to have done three movies before with Shawn Levy. They approached Shawn and said, 'We want you to do a Star Wars movie, and you can pick your writer,'" said Tropper, "And I landed the gig."
In Star Wars: Starfighter, Gosling plays Kade Auberon, described as a cynical rogue confronted by his mysterious past and pulled into a dangerous adventure across the galaxy. A precocious child played by Flynn Gray accompanies Kade, and the central vessel is a G17 Imperial Reaper, identified as the fastest starship ever built, which happens to be sitting in Kade's garage.
Tropper and Levy made their deals before the shape of the film was fully defined. One of the goals they settled on was distance from the established Star Wars mythology. "What we wanted to do was to tell a story that was free of (Star Wars) mythology. We were out ahead in the timeline, and we wanted something with as few barriers of entry as possible for new fans and viewers," Tropper said.
He was equally direct about what the film is not. "This isn't a Skywalker saga movie … we're not dealing with the history of the Rebellion, the First Order, the Resistance or the Empire, we're kind of beyond all that," he said. "It's a simpler movie."
Tropper wrote the script while simultaneously running Lucky, working on pages at nights, on weekends, and sometimes in late afternoons. He also described an unusual level of creative engagement from the below-the-line departments on the production, a level of collaboration he said he had not encountered before on a film.
A first look at Starfighter appeared at D23. The film is set for release next summer.
