Earlier this week, yet another bombshell was dropped in the ‘Star Wars‘ universe with the firing of Colin Trevorrow as director of ‘Star Wars: Episode 9‘. In what has been a fairly rough summer for Lucasfilm, the firing of Tevorrow is just another in a series of director shuffles with their last few projects. Although Starwars.com announced that Colin Trevorrow would be replaced as director of Episode 9, this was apparently because “their visions for the project differ”, whatever that may mean.
A recent piece form Vulture details that the symptoms of Colin Trevorrow’s firing might be more complicated than we originally first thought. According to an “insider” (big grain of salt) that is familiar with tevorrow and the production, Kathleen Kennedy may have pulled the plug on Trevorrow directing Episode 9 because he was “too difficult”. Considering that Tevorrow had multiple attempts as working up s shooting draft for the script Kennedy and Lucasfilm remained unpleased.
Speaking with the undisclosed source, they explained:
“During the making of Jurassic World, he focused a great deal of his creative energies on asserting his opinion,” the executive explains. “But because he had been personally hired by Spielberg, nobody could say, ‘You’re fired.’ Once that film went through the roof and he chose to do Henry, [Trevorrow] was unbearable. He had an egotistical point of view— and he was always asserting that.”
Colin Trevorrow’s most recent work, ‘The Book of Henry‘ garnered awful reviews and many people initially thought that this might be the reason for the director’s firing. in fact it might have simply been the straw that broke the camel’s back.
“When the reviews for Book of Henry came out, there was immediately conjecture that Kathy was going to dump him because they weren’t thrilled with working with him anyway,” the executive continues. “He’s a difficult guy. He’s really, really, really confident. Let’s call it that.”
So if this person’s account is true, it seems that Trevorrow simply clashed with Kennedy to the point that she didn’t feel that his attitude was right for the project. Recently, it seems that Kathleen Kennedy has been taking harsh measures to maintain brand value of ‘Star Wars‘.
What she doesn’t seem to be thinking about is how these decisions might affect the long term value of the franchise. After all, the source also describes Kennedy as the “gatekeeper” of the franchise:
“There’s one gatekeeper when it comes to Star Wars and it’s Kathleen Kennedy,” says a veteran movie producer, who has worked with the studio chief. “If you rub Kathleen Kennedy the wrong way — in any way — you’re out. You’re done. A lot of these young, new directors want to come in and say, ‘I want to do this. I want to do that.’ A lot of these guys — Lord and Miller, Colin Trevorrow — got very rich, very fast and believed a lot of their own hype. And they don’t want to play by the rules. They want to do shit differently. And Kathleen Kennedy isn’t going to fuck around with that.”
While this certainly is a good decision for this film, It’s these little mis-steps that might come back to haunt Lucasfilm in the future. Tune back in as more develops and a new director is announced in the coming months. ‘Star Wars: Episode 9‘ hits theaters on May 24, 2019.
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