One thing became immediately clear after the swift removal of Colin Trevorrow from Star Wars: Episode IX – not to mention Lucasfilm’s decision to part ways with erstwhile Solo directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller – Kathleen Kennedy isn’t going to fuck around when it comes to this rejuvenated galaxy far, far away.
And sure enough, a new report from The Wall Street Journal (h/t Heroic Hollywood) all but confirms that Lucasfilm chose to fire Trevorrow due to his substandard script, one he wrote alongside Jack Thorne.
Word is Colin Trevorrow was also disappointed by the end product, but when he asked Kennedy for another shot, the Lucasfilm boss refused, and instead turned to J.J. Abrams and Chris Terrio (Argo, Justice League) to course-correct Episode IX ahead of its planned production start this summer. And the rest is history.
As things stand, Abrams and Terrio face the somewhat tricky task of continuing where The Last Jedi left off, though if online rumors are any indication, their screenplay will involve a five-year time jump and the Resistance exploiting a mole in the First Order.
File that one in the rumor cabinet for now, as those details were likely pulled from an early storyboard that has since been tossed by the wayside.
Beyond the release of Solo: A Star Wars Story later this month, fans still have Star Wars: Episode IX to look forward to ahead of its arrival next Christmas. And after that? A spinoff movie dedicated to Obi-Wan Kenobi, which may well be with us sooner than we initially thought…