When George Lucas sold Lucasfilm to Disney in 2012, no one knew what would come next, only that Disney would surely be making new Star Wars movies. They soon confirmed their plans to make a new trilogy of movie set after the events of the original trilogy. Although George Lucas had left them scripts, outlines, and other scattered notes for his various visions of a sequel trilogy, Disney decided to scrap these ideas and start anew. They brought on Michael Arndt (
Toy Story 3,
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire) to write a new screenplay. Then they set about to find the director who would helm this massive project. The main candidates were Jon Favreau, Brad Bird, David Fincher, and J.J. Abrams. Favreau had major successes with the
Iron Man and
John Carter franchises, both of which were at this point under the Disney umbrella. However, he declined in order to focus on his other projects, having been burned out by his previous work with major franchises, all of which had been much smaller undertakings than
Star Wars. Bird had done numerous successful animated films, including
The Incredibles and
The Incredibles 2 for Pixar, but his live action career didn't have the same amount of success, with
1906 having a complicated production process and
Tomorrowland flopping at the box office. J.J. Abrams seemed to be the top choice at one point, but he was under contract to make
Star Trek 3 and did not want to operate two major franchises at the same time.
After he withdrew himself from consideration, Disney approached Fincher again. Fincher already had a connection to the franchise, having been an assistant cameraman on
Return of the Jedi and worked for Industrial Light & Magic early in his career. However, Fincher passed on
Episode VII the first time he was approached, due to his concerns about not being able to tell the type of story he wanted and the massive expectations of producing a major blockbuster for the new studio. In early 2014, numerous more candidates had been rumored to pass on the project including Steven Spielberg, Ron Howard, Christopher Nolan, and Guillermo del Toro. Disney CEO Bob Iger was increasing pressure on Lucasfilm head Kathleen Kennedy to get production underway, due to his desire to have at least two films in the trilogy complete before his retirement. Kennedy was ordered to approach earlier choices again with promises of directorial freedom and high budgets. After another meeting with Kennedy, David Fincher accepted the position and was announced in March 2014.
Fincher met with Arndt and began revising the script immediately. Casting was soon underway and that July, a full cast announcement took place at San Diego Comic-Con. Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, and Harrison Ford all announced their return, and Karen Gillan, Daisy Ridley, and John Boyega were introduced as the three main cast members, Benjamin Walker as the villain, with Oscar Isaac and Ben Daniels in undisclosed roles. The film was scheduled for a tentative release date of Christmas 2015.
Principal photography began the following month and was scheduled to last four months. However, production was plagued by delays and was soon extended into early 2015. Due to studio demands from Disney, numerous story changes forced reshoots and constructions of new sets. Lawrence Kasdan was brought in to do script rewrites and directed scenes Fincher was unavailable for due to the overstretched schedule, against Fincher's wishes. Fincher reportedly threatened to quit numerous times and filming paused for one month in early February. During this time, it was apparent that the film would not be completed in time for the scheduled release date, and the release was soon moved back to May 2016, the 39th anniversary of the first
Star Wars film. In February 2015, J.J. Abrams was fired from the production of
Star Trek 3 and Bob Iger asked Kathleen Kennedy to replace Fincher with Abrams. However, Abrams declined to take over the project due to how much work had already been completed and refused to finish another director's work. Fincher returned to set in March 2016 and filming concluded late in April.
On May 4, 2015, the title of the film was announced to be
Star Wars: Aftermath in the first teaser trailer. Fincher directed two weeks of reshoots in June 2015 and began overseeing the editing process with his long time collaborators Angus Wall and Kirk Baxter. However, Fincher refused to make edits demanded by the studio to reduce the runtime and officially quit in October 2015. Upon Kathleen Kennedy's request, Steven Spielberg came in to complete further reshoots and oversee the final editing process. Spielberg brought the runtime down to 146 minutes, short of Fincher's cut which was reportedly 165 to 170 minutes long.
Despite the complicated and arduous production,
Aftermath was released on May 25, 2016, as planned, and opened to major critical and audience acclaim. The film became a major box office success, quickly passing $1 billion internationally. It ended up grossing over $1 billion in the United States and Canada, and a further $1 billion internationally, crossing $2 billion and becoming the third and later second-highest grossing film of all time, surpassing
Titanic and being behind only
Avatar. It is now third again, having been surpassed by
Avengers: Endgame.
David Fincher has said very little about his work on the film, and did not make another film for six years. In a 2019 interview shortly before the release of
Episode VIII, Fincher stated he "would never work with Disney again" and disavowed blockbuster franchise work. In 2022, while promoting his new film
Mank, he said it was a "miracle it came out as well as it did" and "80-90 percent of [his] vision survived, thankfully." Disney also did not comment much on the production process. During the promotional campaign for
Aftermath, Kathleen Kennedy said "he did a tremendous job, but we had differences which we had to resolve separately rather than together." Controversially, George Lucas told a reporter "David's original cut was very good, I enjoyed that movie a lot but I enjoyed the one we got too." This led to fans starting a campaign to "release the Fincher Cut" on social media. Fincher rejected these calls and expressed a desire for the final cut to be the only available version of the film. Upon his retirement from Disney in 2020, Bob Iger said he would not invite Fincher to work another project, but that the studio was "indebted" to him for starting the modern
Star Wars franchise.
