David Cronenberg has revealed that he was approached about directing Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi.

The Cosmopolis director and David Lynch were both linked with the 1983 Star Wars sequel before George Lucas hired Richard Marquand to make the film.

"A long time ago I was approached for one second to do a Star Wars movie, which at that time was called Revenge of the Jedi and then it became Return of the Jedi," Cronenberg told Digital Spy.

"I was approached by Lucasfilm about that and it didn't take them long to realise that maybe that wasn't a good idea."

The filmmaker also dismissed rumours that he was in the running to direct The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, saying: "No, it was not true. There were people who said, 'Wouldn't it be interesting if Cronenberg did it?' and then it sort of became its own reality. Very Videodrome-like.

"But no, I was never approached. I mean, I'm pretty sure I'm absolutely not the kind of director they would be looking for."

> David Cronenberg interview: 'Cosmopolis', 'The Fly', 'Videodrome', more

Asked about his views on making big-budget commercial Hollywood movies, Cronenberg said: "Well you're really restricted by the format that's been established - so for a really inventive or innovative director, that's being put in a straitjacket.

"And the visual style has been established and the characters have been cast - I mean, you're not involved in casting the leads, which is of course, for a director, a hugely important thing.

"Alfonso CuarÃ³n did one of the Harry Potter movies and imposed his own visual, long take, flowing style on it and it was reasonably successful that way.

"You can see it's interesting - you have a huge budget to work with and make more money than you would normally make, but you're pretty restricted. CuarÃ³n could only be inventive in terms of the visual style as everything else was established. How satisfying can it be?"

Cosmopolis is available on Blu-ray and DVD now. Watch the trailer below:

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io