Star Wars Episode IX: Duel Of The Fates - 10 Things We Learned From Colin Trevorrow's Leaked Script
10. It Was Supposedly Written After Carrie Fisher's Death
Lucasfilm
The initial write-up on r/StarWarsLeaks (taken from Burnett's video) states that this version of Episode IX was completed a week prior to Carrie Fisher's death, on December 16 2016. However, as The Playlist points out, both Trevorrow and Lucasfilm producer Kathleen Kennedy had repeatedly claimed that early drafts of the Episode IX script had heavily featured Leia.
This means that this version of Duel of the Fates was likely written after Fisher's passing, and that it was co-written by Derek Connolly. Trevorrow and Connolly's script had supposedly leaked at the beginning of December 2019, but this was immediately dismissed by the director on Twitter.
It's with this in mind that the new, verified Episode IX script from Trevorrow doesn't feature Leia in as pivotal a role as was initially thought. She still features in the story, and even shares a few moments with Rey, so this is actually one element of the script that doesn't diverge as heavily from The Rise of Skywalker as it does in other places.
WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well.
In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.
