Star Wars: J.J. Abrams Just Revealed His ‘Episode IX’ Pitch to Disney

With The Last Jedi now in theaters, filmmakers attached to Lucasfilm are beginning to take steps towards developing Episode IX, which aims to conclude the storyline introduced in The Force Awakens. One of the first steps took place this afternoon, with Episode IX director J.J. Abrams having reportedly met with Disney CEO Bob Iger to discuss the events of the film.

During a seminal conference call yesterday with Iger, he announced that the Walt Disney Company was acquiring many of 21st Century Fox’s assets, including the X-Men, Fantastic Four and Deadpool. Much of the news about this announcement focused on what this meant for the two companies going forward, while Laughing Place noted that Iger mentioned his meeting with Abrams about the future of Star Wars.

Lucasfilm originally tapped Jurassic World director Colin Trevorrow to helm the third film in this new trilogy, with an announcement in September revealing that Trevorrow had parted ways from the project. Shortly after this announcement, Lucasfilm confirmed that Abrams would return to the trilogy that he helped launch.

The filmmaker has had three months to develop his script for the film, which he did with co-writer Chris Terrio, yet it is unclear if the filmmaker scrapped all of Trevorrow’s concept or if he modified it for his script.

“I had no intention to return,” Abrams explained to Rolling Stone earlier this year. “But when the opportunity presented itself to finish a story that we had begun with these new characters, to tell the last chapter of their story, it felt like there was a chance to do it in a way where we could go beyond, and do better than we did in [Episode VII].”

While Abrams might never have expected to return to the franchise, he couldn’t pass up such an interesting creative opportunity.

“I learned so much in that movie and I saw that this was a chance to sort of realize something that we hadn’t quite achieved – and part of that was it was simply the beginning of these new characters and their story,” Abrams explained. “The opportunity to sort of take what we had learned, to take the feeling of who these characters are and what they are and give them a final chapter that felt in the spirit of what we begun? It was too delicious of an opportunity to pass up.”

Episode IX is slated to hit theaters on December 20, 2019.

[H/T Laughing Place]