Trank discusses ‘Star Wars’ exit

When Josh Trank announced May 1 that he was dropping out of a planned “Star Wars” spinoff film less than a year after being brought on to direct, it didn’t take a Jedi master to intuit that the news would cause a disturbance in the Force.

But speaking publicly about his departure from the project for the first time, Trank — the director of 2012’s sci-fi sleeper hit “Chronicle” and the upcoming “Fantastic Four” reboot — says he wasn’t prepared for just how nasty things would get.

“At first I was like, ‘I’m just not going to say anything because it will blow over,’ ” Trank told The Times in an interview for an upcoming Hero Complex magazine cover story on “Fantastic Four.” “But I was shocked — it just hasn’t blown over.... It was the hardest decision I’ve ever had to make in my life.”

In the original joint statement with Lucasfilm announcing his exit — which came less than two weeks after he was a no-show at a panel at the Star Wars Celebration convention in Anaheim — Trank said he was bowing out of the planned second “Star Wars” spinoff film to “pursue some original creative opportunities.”