‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ Oscar Winners The Daniels Stand by ‘Star Wars’ Directing: We Needed Healthcare
“Everything Everywhere All at Once” Oscar winners The Daniels don’t have time to combat the commentary that they’ve been “sucked up by the ‘corporate machine'” after signing it was announced they had signed on to direct Disney+ “Star Wars” series “The Skeleton Crew.”
The series will star Jude Law and centers on a group of kids from a planet who get lost in the larger “Star Wars” galaxy. “Spider-Man: No Way Home” director Jon Watts, the showrunner of the series, confirmed it’s a “Stranger Things”-type adventure series about the adolescents trying to find their way home.
Academy Award winners Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert responded to fan backlash over their move to Disney.
“Lol, all of the people @ing us about getting sucked up by the ‘corporate machine’ can chill. These headlines are always misleading,” Kwan shared on Instagram Stories. “Don’t worry. We aren’t working on a whole series, we guest directed one episode. Jon Watts approached us to do an episode a while ago (before ‘EEAAO’ even came out). We love Jon, love ‘Star Wars,’ love learning new tech, we love meeting new cast and crew, and we needed the days to keep our healthcare (!!!) so it was an easy yes.”
Kwan added, “I’m excited for you all to see it. Our next film will be an original Daniels project so you can stop worrying (and stop bothering me about it).”
The Daniels shot the “Skeleton Crew” episode last year prior to sweeping the 2023 Oscars. The duo won Best Original Screenplay, Best Director, and Best Picture for “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” with stars Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan, and Jamie Lee Curtis winning respective acting awards.
The Daniels told IndieWire’s Eric Kohn at the 2022 SXSW during the premiere of “Everything Everywhere All at Once” that the directing duo turned down working with Marvel on the Disney+ series “Loki” and instead pursued their own independent multiverse film.
“There were meetings with Marvel about ‘Loki’ that we didn’t even take,” Scheinert said.
Co-director Kwan added, “We were trying to make our own multiverse movie. No, the meeting was set, and we went, but by the time we went we said we probably weren’t going to do it. We were trying to shoot our own movie at the same time.”