J.J. Abrams was emotional when he was asked to direct 'Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker'.
J.J. Abrams
The filmmaker - who directed 2015's 'The Force Awakens' - was brought on to the project to replace Colin Trevorrow in September 2017 and J.J. jumped at the chance to complete the trilogy, which also includes 'The Last Jedi'.
He told The Hollywood Reporter: "When Kathy [Lucasfilm's Kathleen Kennedy] called and asked if I'd be interested in coming aboard this movie, I was surprised by how emotional I felt about it. I didn't expect to feel the way I did, and the opportunity to finish the story we started was something I couldn't resist.
"The beauty of working with [co-writer] Chris Terrio and producing with Kathleen Kennedy is that I think we have found a way - I hope, it's up for you to decide - to bring this story to a conclusion in a way that feels satisfying, surprising, amusing, shocking, all the ways that a story should make you feel. Mostly, it's an adventure story about this new generation of characters who have inherited all sorts of things from those who come before. That was, in a way, how I felt about working on this movie."
Meanwhile, Kathleen has insisted that although 'Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker' is "the culmination of the Skywalker Saga", it is not the end of 'Star Wars'.
She said: "This [movie] is the culmination of the Skywalker Saga; it's by no means the culmination of Star Wars. I'm sitting down now with Dan Weiss and David Benioff...and Rian Johnson. We're all sitting down to talk about, where do we go next? We've all had conversations about what the possibilities might be, but now we're locking it down."
"We knew we were going to close this up, we knew that even before we started 'The Force Awakens'. We are looking at the next saga. We are not just looking at another trilogy, we're really looking at the next 10 years or more."
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