Gina Prince-Bythewood Reveals ‘Incredible’ Advice She Once Received from Rian Johnson
Gina Prince-Bythewood Reveals ‘Incredible’ Advice She Once Received from Rian Johnson
Raven BrunnerSun, October 25, 2026 at 6:30 PM UTC
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Gina Prince-Bythewood; Rian Johnson.Credit: Candice Ward/Getty; Dia Dipasupil/Getty -
Gina Prince-Bythewood revealed the “incredible” advice she received from Rian Johnson
Prince-Bythewood sat down with Johnson for a panel discussion at the New York Comic Con panel about her upcoming movie Children of Blood and Bone
She recalled, “When I took this on, I was trying to know how to approach this in something of this scale. I called Rian and said, ‘Can I sit with you for a couple hours and just pick your brain?’ ”
Gina Prince-Bythewood valued the advice she received from Rian Johnson.
Prince-Bythewood, 57, sat down with Johnson for a panel discussion at the New York Comic Con panel about her upcoming movie, Children of Blood and Bone, on Oct. 10 at Javits Center in New York City.
During the conversation, the Woman King director revealed that she once received “incredible” advice from Johnson, who she called one of her “favorite filmmakers” and “one of my favorite humans.”
Prince-Bythewood said, “When I took this on, I was trying to know how to approach this in something of this scale. I called Rian and said, ‘Can I sit with you for a couple hours and just pick your brain?’ It was such an immediate yes, and he gave me such incredible advice.”
She continued, “But even bigger than that, when he was doing Star Wars, he let me sit in the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon and take a picture, and I’m forever grateful for that.”
Prince-Bythewood later shared the exact advice Johnson gave her.
“You gave me incredible advice, which I’ve never forgotten,” she told the moderator. “When you were shooting Star Wars, I had asked you that question, ‘How do you not get overwhelmed by the bigness of all of this?’ And you said, ‘It doesn’t matter how much money you have or how many toys you have, you have to tell a good story.’ That allowed me to go back to the beginning where it was about the relationships and the characters, and to be able to infuse those things into the bigger sandbox.”
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Children of Blood and Bone is an adaptation of Tomi Adeyemi’s bestselling 2018 novel. Written and directed by Prince-Bythewood, the upcoming movie follows a young woman on a quest to restore magic to the people of Orïsha and fight back against a brutal king.
The cast includes Thuso Mbedu, Amandla Stenberg, Damson Idris, Tosin Cole, Cynthia Erivo, Lashana Lynch and Viola Davis.
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Prince-Bythewood praised Adeyemi’s novel while discussing her upcoming movie adaptation during the panel. She told Johnson that she was drawn to the project by her “love of the book.”
“Everything that was in those pages that Tomi wrote is everything that makes a great film,” she said. “You get the gods and creatures, and magic and battles, and kingdoms and heroes. It was such an extraordinary story of characters. I just got excited about trying to bring that to light.”
Her comments come just months after the author distanced herself from the movie and claimed she left the set “hyperventilating and sobbing.”
Children of Blood and Bone is set to hit theaters on Jan. 15, 2027.
on People
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
