Disney have announced that Star Wars: Episode IX, the possible final instalment in the blockbusting Star Wars franchise, will be directed by JJ Abrams.
The film’s planned release date has been moved to December 2019 to allow Abrams and his co-writer Chris Terrio to develop a new script.
Abrams will be returning to the franchise after his work on 2015’s critically and commercially successful Star Wars: The Force Awakens. He’ll be slipping into a director’s chair recently vacated, for undisclosed reasons, by Colin Trevorrow.
Trevorrow had been working on the film since August 2015. The original script reputedly had a significant role in it for Carrie Fisher, whose death at the end of last year left an unfillable hole at the heart of the film series.
