Josh Trank Departs Star Wars Anthology Film
Josh Trank, who was attached to direct the second Star Wars Anthology film, has decided to depart the project.
Trank said, “After a year of having the incredible honor of developing with the wonderful and talented people at Lucasfilm, I’m making a personal decision to move forward on a different path. I’ve put a tremendous amount of thought into this, and I know deep down in my heart that I want to pursue some original creative opportunities. That said, the Star Wars universe has always been one of my biggest influences, and I couldn’t be more excited to witness its future alongside my millions of fellow Star Wars fans. I want to thank my friends Kathleen Kennedy, Kiri Hart, Simon Kinberg, and everyone at Lucasfilm and Disney for the amazing opportunity to have been a part of this. May the Force be with you all.”
Lucasfilm VP of Development Kiri Hart said “It was a privilege to collaborate with Josh. We are grateful for the energy and love of Star Wars that he brought to the process, and we wish him all the best.”
The Star Wars team is continuing to develop the project.
The Hollywood Reporter and Variety aren’t quite as generous as this press release, indicating that Simon Kinberg didn’t want to work with Trank after his poor performance and their head-butting on Fantastic Four, and saying that Disney execs asked him not to attend Celebration. It was pretty obvious when he was announced to be feeling “under the weather” that things weren’t going well for him. I can’t say I was particularly thrilled with him to begin with, so hopefully they find a suitable replacement.
I honestly don’t know what they were thinking bringing in someone who had no proven track record. The guy is young and has done one single movie until Fantastic Four, which hasn’t been released yet but is going through tons of reshoots even up into April. It’s like they picked him at random, and then were surprised that someone they knew next to nothing about didn’t work out as planned.