Flip through the latest issue of Gulf Weekly.
Weeks of rumours have come to end as Lost co-creator and Star Trek reboot director JJ Abrams has turned down the opportunity to direct Disney’s first Star Wars film, Episode VII.
As ‘amazing’ as he predicts the next films will be, he told the UK movie magazine Empire he declined the gig early on and because he’s a major fan he would rather not touch the franchise.
Abrams reportedly told Empire: “There were the very early conversations and I quickly said that because of my loyalty to Star Trek, and also just being a Star Wars fan, I wouldn’t even want to be involved in the next version of those things.”
Abrams praised producer Kathleen Kennedy, George Lucas’ hand-picked successor at the now-Disney-owned Lucasfilm, saying the franchise is ‘in great hands’.
The filmmaker said that even though he’s a ‘huge fan’ of the original trilogy, and ‘the idea of that world continuing is exciting and will be amazing’, he admitted: “I’d rather be in the audience not knowing what was coming, rather than being involved in the minutiae of making them.”
Abrams’ next Star Trek instalment, Star Trek Into Darkness, beams into theatres in May.
