There’s a lot of hype around Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker nowadays, but the upcoming Episode IX didn’t have the easiest journey to the screen. For years, Jurassic World‘s Colin Trevorrow was attached to direct, but he eventually walked away from the project due to creative differences with Lucasfilm, leaving J.J. Abrams to step in and complete the trilogy he began in The Force Awakens.
Naturally, Star Wars fans are interested to know how Trevorrow would’ve approached it differently from Abrams. It’s probably too early for any specific details on his version of Rise of Skywalker – though it likely wasn’t called that back then – but star Daisy Ridley has teased that that iteration of the movie would have been “very different.” While chatting on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, the actress recalled meeting with Trevorrow to discuss his exit and how she knew a fair bit about his vision.
“He was Josh [Gad’s] guest at [the] Murder on the Orient Express [premiere] and we went for dinner afterwards, and Colin sat next to me and I was like, ‘What’s this gonna be like?’ Because all I had heard—I didn’t know what had happened, I just knew that he wasn’t doing it anymore. And he did sort of tell me and sort of not… Actually no, we had gone for dinner and stuff, we went for dinner with Michelle, who is a producer. So I sort of knew. I think everything happens for a reason, I guess.”
Ridley seems a bit hazy on the finer points of Trevorrow’s plans now, but another source has previously suggested that she was so blown away by the director’s take on Episode IX that she was brought to tears. That’s interesting, as one rumor pointed to Lucasfilm firing Trevorrow due to him handing in a substandard script with co-writer Derek Connolly. Others, however, have suggested it could be because he wanted to keep Luke alive, clashing with Rian Johnson’s story for The Last Jedi.
No doubt in time, the full story of Trevorrow’s vision will come out. For now, though, let’s prepare to see Abrams’ take realized when Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker hits theaters on December 20th.