If you see Josh Trank, give him a hug from all of us at CraveOnline. After officially announcing his departure from the second upcoming Star Wars spin-off, we imagine he’s probably having a bit of a rough day.
It’s been 11 months since Josh Trank was announced as the director of the spin-off, the plot of which remains shrouded in mystery. He was hot off the release of his bold and exciting superhero drama Chronicle, and already hard at work on this summer’s Fantastic Four reboot. But in a statement released earlier today (via ComingSoon), Trank explains that he’s more interested in pursuing original projects than major franchises at the moment.
Related: Watch the New ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ Trailer
“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.”
While there’s a good chance that there’s more to the story than Josh Trank is currently telling us, it’s easy to sympathize with a filmmaker who doesn’t want to commit to producing a big budget studio-driven film. They take years to produce, and the finished product is very rarely in the filmmaker’s hands. Avengers: Age of Ultron director Joss Whedon expressed a similar sentiment recently, as he explained why he won’t be directing the upcoming two-part event Avengers: Infinity War.
While the marketing for Josh Trank’s Fantastic Four hasn’t been impressing us (at all), he remains a talented filmmaker and we hope he moves on to bigger and better things in the future. In the meantime, we await the onslaught of rumors and short lists about which filmmaker(s) will replace him on the second Star Wars spin-off. The internet is probably about to go nuts about it, so don’t fuel the flames. Disney is going to replace him soon enough, and the rumors will mostly be false, and inevitably make no difference whatsoever to Disney’s final decision.
William Bibbiani is the editor of CraveOnline’s Film Channel and the host of The B-Movies Podcast. Follow him on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
