Peter: Force Awakens is obviously your number one priority but how do you balance planning this one as a movie itself versus it being also a launching pad for a new trilogy of films. Like, you obviously can’t just plan for just this film, you must be planting the seeds for other stuff?
Kathleen Kennedy: We already have. We’re three quarters of the way through the shooting of
Rogue One, which will finish on the day this is released. And Rian started working on the script for Episode VIII a year and a half ago. So he’s been in prep for a year. And he starts shooting in January, the end of January. So we need to be working a couple of years out in front of, at least in terms of the script, in front of these start dates.
Peter: So when J.J. is doing Force Awakens, did he also work on a treatment for the other films in this sequel trilogy?
Kathleen Kennedy: No, because at that point we were sitting down and talking about where this might go, even as early on as with Michael Arndt. We were sort of plotting out, because obviously if you know up front that you’re building the pacing inside a trilogy structure, we needed to have some sense of where this saga was going without locking in on things and leaving room for creative development. But we had to have some sense of where we were going.
Peter: You know, when this was announced, it seemed to me that the Star Wars Saga films were going to follow the legacy characters and the Star Wars anthology films would focus on new characters in this galaxy, but so far it seems like the opposite.
Kathleen Kennedy: Uh huh.
Peter: You guys are planning the Saga films around…
Kathleen Kennedy: New characters.
Peter: And the anthology films around Han Solo and…
Kathleen Kennedy: No, no. It just so happens to be
Rogue One is the precursor to
New Hope and yes, this Han Solo idea, but I would not argue that we are setting up any kind of prequel notion with these standalone movies. I think that’s so far just coincidence. And to be perfectly honest, we have changed the order of those at the last minute, so that’s not the intention at all.
Peter: Okay. You mentioned Rian Johnson with Episode VIII, when Episode VII is being shot does Rian come in and read the script and give notes—
Kathleen Kennedy: Yup.
Peter: … and maybe suggest plot points in VII to seed things for VIII?
Kathleen Kennedy: Yes. We talked a little bit about that, but we didn’t end up doing a great deal of that — but we did talk about that. And Rian did come in very early and he read, and came and visited the set. J.J. and him had a lot of conversations. I think Colin will end up doing more of that more-so with Rian as he develops Episode IX.
Peter: That makes sense with that being the third film of a trilogy.
In my Kathleen Kennedy Interview, the Lucasfilm head talks about the future of the Star Wars franchise, movies, theme parks, video games and much more.
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