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Star Wars Franchise Loses Fourth Director in Two Years

posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday September 06 2017, @08:58PM   
from the the-sixth-is-free dept.

takyon writes:

Filmmaker Colin Trevorrow will not direct Star Wars: Episode IX:

Star Wars: Episode IX needs a new director. Lucasfilm has announced that Jurassic World filmmaker Colin Trevorrow is leaving the project. [...] Playwright Jack Thorne, best known for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, was recently hired to do a comprehensive rewrite of the Episode IX script by Trevorrow and his Safety Not Guaranteed co-screenwriter Derek Connolly.

While the nature of the disagreement with Lucasfilm isn't clear, there have been rumblings of discontent for several months. During that time, Trevorrow also suffered withering reviews for his passion project, The Book of Henry, which was a critical and commercial calamity.

Although Lucasfilm's new movies have found immense success at the box office and with audiences and critics, the process of working with directors on the new saga and spin-offs has occasionally been fraught. Chronicle filmmaker Josh Trank was set to direct an unspecified stand-alone movie (believed to be a Boba Fett project) before parting ways amid chaos on the recent Fantastic Four movie. And The LEGO Movie directors Phil Miller and Chris Lord were removed from the young Han Solo film and replaced with veteran Ron Howard amid disputes over the state of that project.

Star Wars IX was planned for release on May 24, 2019. Star Wars: The Last Jedi comes out on December 15, 2017.

Also at The Hollywood Reporter (discussion). Lucasfilm statement.

Safety Not Guaranteed or Steins;Gate?

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Original Submission

• Re:GOOD! Re:GOOD! (Score: 4, Interesting) by Mykl on Thursday September 07 2017, @01:21AM (1 child)

  by Mykl (1112) on Thursday September 07 2017, @01:21AM (#564362)

  I enjoyed The Force Awakens. I agree that the script was not Oscar-worthy, however I think you'll find that's true of A New Hope as well.

  It was a little disappointing that there was yet another Death Star to destroy, but it didn't seem to be a problem for everyone that 2/3 of the original trilogy involved destroying Death Stars. As parent says, demonstrating that this won't be as bad as Eps 1-3 was important if they were going to win back the public's trust.

  Here are some things that I don't want to see in Eps 8 and 9:

  • Jar Jar
  • Midichlorians
  • Rastafarian aliens
  • Virgin Births
  • Stupid characters destined to be kids toys who win by being clumsy
  • Horrible wooden love scenes
  • Say "I wonder what this button does" and press a random button in ship's cockpit to destroy the enemy command and control center and shut down an entire droid army in one hit, ignoring the fact that a signal jammer would effectively produce an identical result and would therefore show a single C&C as being completely unworkable from the start
  • Discovering that, far from being an out-of-the-way backwater, Tattooine is in fact in the middle of the galaxy and is a convenient waypoint from anywhere to anywhere else (it's bad enough that it has to appear in RotJ, but all 3 of the prequels?)
  • Having super-smart people actually be as dumb as rocks (seriously, if a star is missing from a chart, but all other signs point to a star being there, and you're told a star is there, is it not just possible that the map has been altered?)
  • Hiding a child in the single most obvious place ever (with their only known relative, whose name and exact location is known by the person who you're trying to hide them from)
  • Claiming that standing on a hill slightly higher than your opponent means you'll win any fight, despite the fact that this hasn't mattered at any other point in the fight until then
  • Having your 'evil' meter go from 10% to 100% in moments ("oh, you accidentally contributed to Mace Windu's death. Now you're my bitch and must do what I say. Go and murder dozens of children immediately!")
  • Making a side character that people happen to like in the original trilogy end up being caught up in totally unrelated, yet galaxy-changing events like, oh say, the creation of an entire clone army

  OK, I think I'm done.

  Parent

  Starting Score:	1		point
  Moderation		+2
  Insightful=1, Interesting=1, Total=2
  Extra 'Interesting' Modifier		0
  Karma-Bonus Modifier		+1
  Total Score:		4

• Re:GOOD! (Score: 1) by Kawumpa on Friday September 08 2017, @07:04AM

  by Kawumpa (1187) on Friday September 08 2017, @07:04AM (#564969)

  I agree that the script was not Oscar-worthy, however I think you'll find that's true of A New Hope as well.

  That is not too surprising considering that it's basically the same script.

  Parent