Star Wars Episode IX Change of Director and writer and date of release

Colin Trevorrow was fired from Episode IX last week and now this week his replace has been revealed: JJ Abrams.

JJ Abrams of course directed, wrote the story and screenplay and produced Episode 7. JJ had impressed Kathleen Kennedy so much that he was hired to be the Executive Producer on Episode 8 and 9. Now JJ is also producing that film as well as writing the screenplay and directing.

Colin Trevorrow was the original director with Derek Conolly writing, based of the works of Rian Johnson. After Carrie Fisher's passing Colin and new screenwriter Jack Thorne began to rewrite the script from scratch. Complications seemed to have arose where Kathleen Kennedy has now taken the decision to remove Trevorrow from the project. Although the unsuccessful rewrites probably was the major reason for the sacking it would have been deeper than that otherwise Colin would have remained a director. In his replace as writers are JJ and Chris Terrio, meaning that the other screenwriters have also been sacked.

Following the sacking of Trevorrow there was much speculation on who would replace him. If there wasn't so much time restraints I am guessing that they would have gone with a new director. Both Johnson and Abrams were, as far as we can tell, successful directors in the eyes of Kathleen Kennedy, who obviously hasn't liked every director she has found. Both of the two were also already involved in IX to some capacity. Johnson wrote the story treatment and Abrams was the executive producer. It has been reported that Johnson was offered the role but turned it down so they went to Abrams, who obviously accepted

The move to December is to be expected as the writing process has to start again from scratch and it would be near impossible to get that ready for the original November filming time so the decision to swap it with Aladdin in the scheduling is a wise move from Disney. I don't mind particularly but this does mean a year and half wait for a Star Wars film, which is nothing for pre-Disney fans but it is longer than we have recently become accustomed too.

What I hope with Abrams is that, in his script, he doesn't play it as safe as he did in the Force Awakens. If we get another Starkiller Base, I'll be fuming, absolutely fuming.

Problems involving the crew of a Star Wars film may seem familiar - and that's because its happened before on all but one film - Episode 8, but that film still had the issue of the death of one of the lead actresses. Here is a timeline of what exactly has changed.

So the Episode IX Timeline has looked like this in terms of story and screenwriters

Story: Rian Johnson
Screenplay: Chris Trevorrow and Derek Connolly

Story & Screenplay: Chris and Derek

Story: Chris and Derek
Sreenplay: Chris and Jack Thorne

Story & Screenplay: JJ and Chris Terrio.