Ousted ‘Star Wars Episode 9’ Director Still Has Writing Credits

image via StarWars.com

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is due to release in a little less than a month, and with it, fans are learning more about its production the closer we get to December. Recently, Collider reported that the Writer’s Guild of America has settled on the writing credits for the film. As expected, director J.J. Abrams is getting screenplay credit alongside collaborator Chris Terrio, known for his work on Justice League and Argo. The film will also, of course, feature a “Based on characters created by George Lucas” credit. However, the WGA has also decided not only to credit Abrams and Terrio for the broader “Story By” credits, but also to maintain writing credits for Colin Trevorrow and Derek Connolly, who were ousted from the project in 2017.

Colin Trevorrow and Derek Connolly were the original writers for Episode 9, with Trevorrow also set to direct. Both were coming off their success working together in a similar setup on Jurassic World, which released in 2015 to $1.6 billion in global box office revenue. However, in 2017, Trevorrow and Connolly exited the film after writing multiple rejected drafts for the script. J.J. Abrams returned to the series the next day, pledging to take over the film as director, and to share writing duties with Terrio.

The WGA’s decision comes as somewhat of a surprise, then, with Collider’s writeup pointing out that Abrams publicly stated that his team was essentially starting over from scratch when they took over the reins on the film.

“You don’t have the story, you don’t have the cast, you don’t have the designers, the sets…this was starting over,” Abrams explained to Fast Company in April of this year. “There was nothing.”

What the WGA’s decision means for the final movie is unclear. Collider speculates that the organization must have ruled that some of Trevorrow and Connolly’s ideas made it into the final film, regardless of Abrams’ rather damning testimony. Trevorrow himself seemed to confirm this when speaking to Empire on November 22, where he detailed that while he is not responsible for Emperor Palpatine’s inclusion in The Rise of Skywalker, he is “grateful to J.J. for embracing some of our ideas. It’s exciting that fans will get to see the moments that felt essential to all of us.”

There’s little else for the press to go on about what this might mean for the viewer experience yet, or where the balance lies between Abrams and Trevorrow’s separate accounts.

What we can report is that, behind the scenes, the WGA’s decision does mean that Trevorrow and Connolly will be granted residuals from Episode 9’s earnings, which should help lessen the blow of being replaced after two years and several scripts worth of work. As for happens after The Rise of Skywalker, here are our thoughts on the future of Star Wars.



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