JJ Abrams Reveals He Originally Said No To Star Wars 9, Talks Last Jedi's Different Direction
Abrams is back for Episode 9 after Colin Trevorrow's departure.
J.J. Abrams is back in the hot seat for Star Wars Episode IX, but he's revealed that he was initially going to turn down the chance to return to a galaxy far, far away.
Abrams, who directed The Force Awakens, was announced as Episode IX's director back in 2017, after Colin Trevorrow was dismissed from the project over creative differences with Lucasfilm. In a wide-ranging interview with Fast Company, he was asked about his return to the franchise, saying:
"I wasn’t supposed to be there. I wasn’t the guy, ya’ know? I was working on some other things, and I had something else that I was assuming would be the next project, if we’d be so lucky. And then Kathy Kennedy called and said, “Would you really, seriously, consider coming aboard?” And once that started, it all happened pretty quickly. The whole thing was a crazy leap of faith. And there was an actual moment when I nearly said, “No, I’m not going to do this.” I was trepidatious to begin with, getting involved, because I love Star Wars so much and felt like it was . . . . It was almost, on a personal level, a dangerous thing to get too close to something that you care that much about."
He goes on to admit that it felt like playing with fire after already doing Episode VII - which he also turned down at the first time of asking - and that "there was a moment when I literally said, 'No'." It was his wife and Bad Robot co-CEO, Katie McGrath, who convinced him to take on the job.
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The task was made trickier not only by the fact he wasn't supposed to direct Episode IX, but also that Rian Johnson had taken things in such new directions with The Last Jedi. On that subject, Abrams says:
"I had some gut instincts about where the story would have gone. But without getting in the weeds on episode eight, that was a story that Rian wrote and was telling based on seven before we met. So he was taking the thing in another direction. So we also had to respond to Episode VIII. So our movie was not just following what we had started, it was following what we had started and then had been advanced by someone else. So there was that, and, finally, it was resolving nine movies. While there are some threads of larger ideas and some big picture things that had been conceived decades ago and a lot of ideas that Lawrence Kasdan and I had when we were doing Episode VII, the lack of absolute inevitability, the lack of a complete structure for this thing, given the way it was being run was an enormous challenge.
While Episode IX is still shrouded in secrecy - no one even knows the title yet, although Star Wars Celebration should change that - Abrams is ultimately happy with how his return has panned out, saying: "I feel like we’re in a place where we might have something incredibly special. So I feel relief being home, and I feel gratitude that I got to do it. And more than anything, I’m excited about what I think we might have."