Vanity Fair had the chance to do an interview with Kathleen Kennedy earlier this year as part of their “The Las Jedi” issue, and in that interview she shared some new details about what’s going on at Lucasfilm right now in regards to what they’re going to do next after Episode IX, and how the tragic death of Carrie Fisher changed the direction for the last episode in this trilogy.
You can check out a portion of that interview below:
With The Force Awakens, two years ago, the public didn’t know who Rey, Kylo, Finn, and Poe were. The reception of those characters has been positive, and it could have gone either way.
Well, does it?
We are having discussions about that right now.
For that matter, must the saga necessarily unfold in trilogies?
These are the questions we’re asking. They haven’t been answered yet. I always think it’s important to try to answer the “Why?” You can make any movie you want, and certainly inside Star Wars, now we could do a wide variety of things. But what exactly is the story we feel is important to tell beyond Episode IX—I think we have to answer that before we know whether we’re going to carry on.
You have the “young Han Solo” story film coming out next year, and Episode IX in 2019. Is there another story film in production or pre-production, beyond the Han Solo one?
Yes. We haven’t identified it yet, but yes. We have a couple of things right now that we’re circling, and we’ll make a decision between the two pretty shortly. It’s probably for 2020, and we will make a decision by June.
And as for Episode IX, how mapped out is it?
Well, as you can imagine, we were really stunned by the death of Carrie. So we had mapped something out a year ago that [Episode IX writer-director] Colin Trevorrow was working on. In fact, he delivered a script to us in early December. So her death was a real shock, and changed things quite dramatically.
So General Leia was going to be a significant part of Episode IX.
Really significant, yeah.
And now that’s going to have to be—
Rethought.
Kathleen Kennedy definitely shared some interesting details in that interview. It looks like we will be getting a new standalone “Star Wars” film in 2020 after Episode IX, and while we might not find out in June, Lucasfilm will know for sure what that movie is next month. I also find the question of the Saga films not necessarily being trilogies very interesting, as I never really thought of them being made any other way, but that is a question Lucasfilm is now asking.
And of course it’s incredibly sad to hear how significant of a role Carrie Fisher was going to have in Episode IX, and how it now had to go through a big change because of her tragic death.
For the full interview with Kathleen Kennedy, be sure to head on over to Vanity Fair.
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