J.J. Abrams Wants Ava DuVernay to Direct a Star Wars Movie, but She Probably Doesn't Want To

No woman has ever directed a Star Wars film (only a handful have even spoken in them!), but that doesn’t mean the men in charge of the series don’t think a woman could. In a recent interview with Nerdist, J.J. Abrams, the man who recently referred to Star Wars as a “boys’ thing,” knew exactly who’d be great at the job (if, of course, it’s ever actually offered to her): Ava DuVernay.

Said Abrams:

“The knee-jerk reaction if I had to is Ava DuVernay, who I think would just kill it. She is as much a fan of genre movies, and hearing her talk about not just Star Wars but those kinds of films is evidence that she would just kill it. When you look at her work in Selma, which was as-well told and as sophisticated and humane a film as I think has come out in the last decade, if she can do that story that well, there’s no question she would kill this movie.”

And though, yes, she probably would kill it, DuVernay probably wouldn’t accept the job if it were offered to her. Earlier this year, she decided not to direct Marvel’s Black Panther because it “wasn’t going to be an Ava DuVernay film.”

She continued:

“Is this important enough for me to do? Are these people I want to go to bed with? [Making Black Panther] would be three years of not doing other things that are important to me…I’m just interested in illuminating the magnificence of the lives of black people — the complexity, the positive, the negative, the in-between, the full-bodied nature of black lives. That’s what I’m committed to, that’s the one thing I’m most interested in.”

Something that probably isn’t important to DuVernay? Directing the new installment of a film series created, written, and directed by a bunch of white dudes nearly four decades into its run.