Damon Lindelof’s $400 Million Mind

Will He Do 'Star Wars'?

“No one ever asked me [to be involved in Star Wars]. Disney hasn’t; J.J. Abrams hasn’t," Lindelof says. "I started telling everyone I knew that I didn’t want to do it and couldn’t do it." A wampa from The Empire Strikes Back is seen pictured (left) on the floor.

In Demand

At a time when franchises are driving the box office, and those who can craft addictive stories to back up mere concepts are in high demand, Lindelof has proved invaluable. He arguably is the single most- visible screenwriter in a town that traditionally marginalizes them.

The Business

"There’s this idea that I have a trunk, and in that trunk are 20 great show ideas that I haven’t had the chance to develop yet," Lindelof explains. "The truth is, there just aren’t. I have cool ideas, things that excite me on a regular basis. They are scenes, moments, frameworks, concepts, characters ... but none of them are a concept for a show."

Lindelof and Abrams

“I’d always loved mystery; but his version of the mystery box is different from my own,” says Lindelof (left), here with Abrams in 2005, when Lost won the Emmy for outstanding drama series. “Which is: I need to open that box and J.J. is OK with just having it exist and imagining what’s inside it. That’s more exciting to him. When he pitched me the Hatch day one on Lost, I was like, ‘What’s in that thing?’ And he’s like, ‘Oh, we’ll figure it out later.’”

Photobombing George Lucas

“We’re at Disneyland in Tomorrowland, and I’m waiting in line," Lindeloff says. "My dad doesn’t like going on rides — I would wait in line, and he would sit on a bench and read a book — and George Lucas, three kids and another dude walk by me. So I leave the line, which I’ve been waiting on for 40 minutes, and I grab my dad, and I say: ‘Dad, George Lucas is on that ride. I shit you not. I’m going to stand at the elevator, and I want you to take a picture of me with George Lucas getting off in the background."

On 'Star Trek Into Darkness'

“Since the moon landing, the only version of the future that we’re getting are different iterations of post-apocalypse, or apocalypse itself," says Lindelof. "Star Trek is the only series that has the balls to say,‘We have problems with other alien civilizations, but as far as humanity goes, we’ve sorted it out.’ The primary colorness of it and utopian future that Star Trek presents is still something that we like to see, even though we no longer buy it."

On 'World War Z'

“When I first got the call, ‘Brad wants to meet with you,’ you kind of can’t say no to that," says Lindelof on World War Z. "The proposition is too intriguing. And it was about World War Z, which is a property I was very interested in. But it very quickly became apparent that it wasn’t, ‘It’ll be just a week or two of work; you’ll suggest some changes and maybe write a couple of pages, and then we’re gonna do four or five days of reshoots.’"

On 'Cowboys & Aliens'

"It was challenged by the genre conventions: ‘Is it sci-fi with Western elements or is it a Western with sci-fi elements?,'" Lindelof says of Cowboys & Aliens. "Which are two different animals. Are we gonna take ourselves seriously? I had limited control because I worked on one draft between seasons of Lost. I take full responsibility for what I did, but who knows if there was any way to make a successful version of that movie given those constraints."