IN CONVERSATION

“WE’RE TRYING TO EXCAVATE WHAT IS INEVITABLE.”
J.J. ABRAMS ON RETURNING TO THE PILOT’S CHAIR AND BRINGING THE SAGA HOME

How much of this story was conceived back when you and Lawrence Kasdan wrote The Force Awakens?

We had a loose plan of where it would go, but we were focusing on Episode VII and I couldn’t do that for VIII and IX as well. While I was prepping and then shooting VII , Kathy brought on Rian, who’s a director I admire enormously. He read our script, he looked at what we had shot, and he went off and did his thing. What he wrote in no way undermined what I was thinking the ending would be.

What was your writing process on this one?

Chris Terrio and I started talking about the broad ideas I’d had from the beginning, things that we had inherited, and things about the saga. This whole trilogy was always meant to be a continuum, a part of the larger nine films, so