In just a month, the Skywalker Saga will conclude on the silver screen. But, the final installment of the new trilogy wasn’t devoid of roadblocks during its development. Jurassic World’s Colin Trevorrow was originally attached to co-write and direct Rise of Skywalker before J.J. Abrams returned to helm the project. Fans were initially led to believe Abrams was given a blank page when he signed on, but the official Rise of Skywalker writing credits say something different.
Ahead of the highly-anticipated release, the Writers Guild of America (via Collider) has determined Rise of Skywalker’s writing attributions. The screenplay credit is no shocker, belonging to Chris Terrio and J.J. Abrams, who worked together on the script. The “based on characters created by George Lucas” is business as usual. But when it comes to the story, the “Derek Connolly & Colin Trevorrow and Chris Terrio & J.J. Abrams” credit is unexpected.
Writing partners Derek Connolly and Colin Trevorrow were attached to Rise of Skywalker in the beginning when Trevorrow was set to direct. But when he left the last Skywalker Saga installment in September 2017 due to creative differences, it commonly postulated their contributions were thrown away as well.
J.J. Abrams previously said when he signed on he had “literally nothing” to work with and he was “starting over” when he asked Batman v Superman writer Chris Terrio to be his writing partner. Yet, the official writing credits seem to cancel out these words. Perhaps after he said that, some elements of their story were implemented into Rise of Skywalker? Check out what Abrams previously said:
You’ve got two years from the decision to do it to release, and you have literally nothing . . . . You don’t have the story, you don’t have the cast, you don’t have the designers, the sets. There was a crew, and there were things that will be worked on for the version that preceded ours, but this was starting over. And because this was such a mega job, I knew at the very least I needed a co-writer to work on this thing, but I didn’t know who that co-writer would be. There was nothing. So the first thing I did was reach out to a writer who I’ve admired for years, Chris Terrio. who I didn’t really know, to say, ‘Listen, would you want to write Star Wars with me?’ And he screamed.
Writing credits for Trevorrow and Connolly in addition to Abrams and Terrio point to the pair recieving residuals for Rise of Skywalker after all. Due to the size of the Star Wars movies, they often go through edits and rewrites. It’s quite possible when Abrams’ version was brought to the studio, they decided to go back and add some of Trevorrow’s ideas to flesh out the script.
A ship called the TIE Echelon from Colin Trevorrow’s lost Star Wars ideas was recently added to Galaxy’s Edge in Disneyland. It’s really tough to tell how much Rise of Skywalker drew from previous drafts, it could be as small as a character or ship concept to a full-fledged storyline.
Rise of Skywalker finishes off a story 40 years in the making when it hits theaters on December 20.
