Star Wars Actor John Boyega Says He's Spoken With New Lucasfilm President Dave Filoni About a Return to the Franchise, Years After Suggesting He Wouldn't Play Finn Again
· IGN
Star Wars actor John Boyega has revealed he's spoken with new Lucasfilm president Dave Filoni about a potential return to the franchise, after previously suggesting he was done playing former stormtrooper Finn.
Boyega played Finn in all three of the Star Wars sequels, though subsequently slammed Disney following the launch of 2019's divisive The Rise of Skywalker, a movie which he said had largely sidelined Finn's character arc. While the movie gives Finn a fair amount of screentime (and more so than some others introduced throughout the sequel trilogy), it leaves Finn quietly harboring the secret that he's Force-sensitive — something the film implies without making explicit, without any time to develop further.
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"[W]hat I would say to Disney is do not bring out a Black character, market them to be much more important in the franchise than they are and then have them pushed to the side," Boyega told GQ back in 2020. "It's not good. I'll say it straight up."
Subsequent years have seen Boyega distance himself from Star Wars further, most notably in a 2022 interview with SiriusXM where he said that "at this point I'm cool off it, I'm good off it." He continued: "Versatility is my path and Finn is at a good confirmation point where you can just enjoy him in other things: the games, the animation. I feel like [Episodes] 7 to 9 was good for me."
Boyega found fame in 2011 movie Attack the Block, prompting a flurry of further film and TV roles that stretched throughout his time in the spotlight making and promoting Star Wars. The past few years have seen him appear in fewer projects, however, with his most recent movie the Netflix sci-fi comedy They Cloned Tyrone, launched back in 2023.
Now, speaking at Megacon Orlando during a fan panel hosted by ScreenRant, Boyega struck a different tone when asked whether he'd ever return as Finn once again. When an audience member shouted out “Get Dave [Filoni] on the phone," Boyega replied: “I actually have, actually."
While Boyega did not elaborate further, fans have suggested the fact he had reached out to Filoni at all was an indication that he'd now softened his position on appearing as Finn in future. Lucasfilm currently has a raft of further Star Wars projects in development, including nebulous plans to bring back Daisy Ridley's Rey for multiple films set after Rise of Skywalker. If Boyega was to return, it'd be easy to see Rey dropping back in on her old pal there.
Exactly when Rey will return remains unclear, however, particularly after former Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy failed to mention the previously-announced standalone movie set to feature Rey Skywalker in her exit interview. The project, revealed by Kennedy with fanfare at Star Wars Celebration 2023, was planned to feature the return of Daisy Ridley as Rey Skywalker, and reveal how the character started a new era of the Jedi Order.
Lucasfilm is also incubating a new trilogy of movies from Simon Kinberg, the director behind the widely-panned X-Men movie Dark Phoenix and 2022 spy action flop The 355, which currently sounds like it's more likely to happen. "[Kinberg] wrote something that we read in August, and it was very good, but not there," Kennedy told Deadline. "We've pretty much upended the story, and then spent a great deal of time on the treatment, which he finished literally about four weeks ago. And it's a very detailed treatment, like 70 pages. And so he is expected to give us something in March."
Before all of that, Star Wars will return to theaters this year with The Mandalorian And Grogu, due out on May 22. Ryan Gosling's Star Wars: Starfighter then arrives next year, on May 28, 2027.
Image credit: Paras Griffin/Getty Images.
Tom Phillips is IGN's News Editor. You can reach Tom at [email protected] or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social