J.J. Abrams back with ‘Star Wars’
J.J. Abrams is returning to “Star Wars” and will replace Colin Trevorrow as writer and director of “Episode IX,” pushing the film’s release date back seven months. Disney announced Abrams’ return on Tuesday, a week after news broke of Trevorrow’s departure. After several high-profile exits by previous “Star Wars” directors, Lucasfilm is turning to the filmmaker who helped resurrect the franchise in the first place. Abrams will co-write the film with screenwriter Chris Terrio.
As the director of “The Force Awakens,” Abrams rebooted “Star Wars” to largely glowing reviews from fans and more than $2 billion in box office. Abrams had said that would be his only film for the franchise.
“Star Wars: Episode IX” was originally slated to hit theaters in May 2019, but in the wake of the shift has officially been pushed back to a Dec. 20, 2019 release. It is the final installment in the new “main” Star Wars trilogy that began with Abrams’ “The Force Awakens” in 2015 and will continue this December with director Rian Johnson’s “The Last Jedi.”
Earlier this year, Lucasfilm parted ways with director Phil Lord and Christopher Miller and replaced them with Ron Howard deep into production on the Han Solo spinoff. In 2015, the company fired director Josh Trank from work on another, future Star Wars spinoff. And extensive reshoots on “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” led to widespread speculation that director Gareth Edwards had been unofficially sidelined by Tony Gilroy.