As if re-igniting the Star Trek franchise wasn't enough, JJ Abrams has landed the biggest job in genre cinema of the moment: he’ll direct Star Wars: Episode VII for Disney and Lucasfilm.
Despite playing coy back in November when asked directly by Hollywood Life about the gig (“I am looking forward more than anyone to the next iterations of Star Wars, but I believe I will be going as a paying moviegoer!”) and telling our own Mark Dinning he couldn't possibly do it, Abrams has made a deal to sit in the captain’s chair for the film, as first reported by The Wrap's sources and now confirmed by Lucasfilm and Disney.
Sci-fi director JJ Abrams will head up the seventh Star Wars film, Lucasfilm owner Walt Disney Co has said. Star Wars creator George Lucas said he was the "ideal choice" to direct the movie - due out in 2015 - adding "the legacy couldn't be in better hands". It will be scripted by Oscar-winning writer Michael Arndt. Abrams, who co-created Lost and directed the Star Trek reboot, said he was "more grateful to George Lucas now than I was as a kid".
In October, Disney announced it had bought Lucasfilm for $4.05bn (£2.5bn) and was committed to three new films. Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy, who will produce the films, said Abrams was "the perfect director to helm this". "Beyond having such great instincts as a filmmaker, he has an intuitive understanding of this franchise - he understands the essence of the Star Wars experience," she said in a statement. The original Star Wars trilogy - which consists of the original film in 1977, 1980's The Empire Strikes Back and 1983's Return of the Jedi - was always envisioned by Lucas as the central chunk of a nine-movie cycle.
Abrams, who has also directed films including Mission: Impossible III and Super 8, said in a 2009 interview with the Los Angeles Times that, "as a kid, Star Wars was much more my thing than Star Trek was".
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