Colin Trevorrow Speaks Out on Leaving Star Wars: Episode IX

Though we might imagine it would be painful to talk about the dream of directing a Star Wars movie becoming a nightmare, filmmaker Colin Trevorrow opened up about the experience earlier today. While speaking on the Collider’s Directors on Directing panel during the digital Comic-Con@Home event today, he had a very diplomatic way of speaking about his time with Lucasfilm and how it differed from his other times working in the studio system. The topic of him previously being up to direct “Episode IX,” which would have been titled Duel of the Fates with some major changes from The Rise of Skywalker, Trevorrow spoke about how his time with the franchise came to an end during development (ironically after a question from Robert Rodriguez, who directed some of The Mandalorian season 2).

“I have been very fortunate in the films that I’ve directed,” Trevorrow said. “The path that I wanted to follow and the path that everyone involved wanted to follow was the same. It’s totally possible for people to see two totally different paths through the woods. That was just an experience that obviously, you can imagine, as all of these things, it can get to the point of being traumatic when there’s something that you care about that much and you’ve invested that much in it. But that’s one of the things that you accept when you take on any role in film, especially when you become a storyteller — that there are going to be heartbreaks. There’s going to be crushing disappointments, and then there’s going to be victories. Hopefully, they’ll balance out in the end.”

Trevorrow also showed off a piece from his version of the film, of which only one exists in the entire world. The director stepped off camera to retrieve what he called a “Tie Marauder,” one of two ships that he was able to design for Star Wars before his version of the film was shelved (the other still lives in a form though and can be seen at Disneyland). The ship, which looks like a rotating version of the Empire’s “Tie” ships, with seemingly three cockpits, was created by Trevorrow with his son, a memory he holds dear.

“Now this is the only one in the world,” Trevorrow added. “And it’s an amazing memory for me when I got to do something that was an incredible experience from start to finish that I was able to make a Star Wars ship with my son.”

Though he didn’t get to make a new Star Wars, Trevorrow has already stepped behind the camera on his second Jurassic movie, directing Jurassic World: Dominion for a summer 2021 release date.