To say that the parting of ways with a director by a studio that’s fired between two and four other directors from their mega-franchise in the last two years (depending on whether you think of Lord & Miller as one director or two, and whether you consider Gareth Edwards having a chunk of his movie reshot by another director a firing) was a surprise might be an exaggeration, but nevertheless the most eyebrow-raising piece of news of the week was that Colin Trevorrow, the “Jurassic World” helmer who landed the job of directing “Star Wars Episode IX” several years ago, had left the movie only months before filming was set to begin.
Trevorrow at least lasted longer than Josh Trank, who was let go early in development of his “Star Wars Story,” and didn’t have the heartbreak of being fired mid-production like Lord & Miller on the Han Solo movie, but it’s still not a great situation for him. If anything’s been made clear by this, and it’s underlined by a new Vulture interview with an anonymous insider, it’s this: Lucasfilm head Kathleen Kennedy is not. Fucking. Around.
Word from the trades when the news broke earlier in the week was that the problems came over creative differences on the script, withThe Hollywood Reporter describing the relationship between the director and Kennedy as “unmanageable”, and Vulture’s interview with an insider (not at Lucasfilm, so take it all with a pinch of salt, but who worked with Trevorrow on both “Jurassic World” and this year’s “Book Of Henry”) seems to back that up.
“During the making of ‘Jurassic World,’ he focused a great deal of his creative energies on asserting his opinion,” the executive says. ““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… He’s a difficult guy. He’s really, really, really confident. Let’s call it that”
Now, it’s popular to dump on Trevorrow after “Book Of Henry,” and even before with the director having become something of an emblem for untested white male filmmakers landing megabudget blockbusters, but we’ll say this much: 1) The source sounds like someone with their own axe to grind and 2) focusing “a great deal of [your] creative energies on asserting his opinion” is basically what the job of a director is. So to paint Trevorrow as some out-of-control avant-garde filmmaker is a bit of a reach.
Ultimately, it seems that Trevorrow, like filmmakers before him, butted heads with Kennedy and paid the price. Another unnamed producer tells Vulture “There’s one gatekeeper when it comes to Star Wars and it’s Kathleen Kennedy. 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.”
Which on the one hand is all well and good: Kennedy has a job to do, which is to protect Star Wars creatively and commercially, and the results so far, on two tough productions, speak for themselves. On the other, would any talented filmmakers be bothered with the idea of grappling with a studio this controlling with a “Star Wars” from here on out? Are we just stuck with Ron Howards and Stephen Daldrys from here on out?
Of course, the man to the rescue could be Rian Johnson: the director behind “The Last Jedi” seems to have worked without friction with Kennedy, and is heavily rumored to take over from Trevorrow. Will the results still show the singular filmmaker that we know and love? We’ll find out when the movie opens in December.