With the immense success of Solo: A Star Wars Story, it's easy to forget the production was fraught with "creative differences" that eventually lead to Ron Howard coming in as a replacement director and having to re-shoot much of the film. This isn't the only Lucasfilm production that faced similar issues, as Jurassic World director Colin Trevorrow was set to direct Episode IX to finish off the Skywalker trilogy, but was fired from the project in September 2017.
While Trevorrow didn't reveal much about the reasons he chose to part ways with the sci-fi film, he did express gratitude about having been a part of it at all, Empire reports. "I don't want to talk too much about it because I don't want to affect the way that fans get to see these films," he said. "When we were kids, these movies came to us from far away. They were a gift. And the more we talk about how they're made, the more it reveals that they're just movies. But they're not just movies, they're more than that. Beyond that, I got the opportunity to tell a story that is a celebration of everything I believe in, I got to tell it to George Lucas and I got to tell it to Luke Skywalker, and those are experiences I will cherish for the rest of my life."
Trevorrow reportedly wrote a script for the Episode IX script with Derek Connolly, who also co-wrote Jurassic World and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. It appears Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy was unhappy about the scripts, and even hired Harry Potter and the Cursed Child writer Jack Thorne to come up with a new script. This version was eventually scrapped, as well. JJ Abrams is now working on a brand new script alongside Chris Terrio, in addition to coming on as the film's new director.
Episode IX is currently set for a December 2019 release.
