Fresh from The New Yorker:
There’s a big Hollywood Boulevard premiere screening of “The Force Awakens” Monday night, so we're mere hours from Twitter exploding with opinion this evening. (Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher have both already said it’s really good.)
As we wait to adjust our expectations ahead of Thursday night’s first public screenings, Episode VII writer-director J.J. Abrams says he’s read Rian Johnson’s Episode VIII script and says it’s “amazing.”
Abrams tells /film:
“We don’t write a treatment but there are countless times we came up with something and said ‘Oh, this would be so great for Episode VIII!” or “Thats what we could get to in IX!’ It was just that kind of forward moving story. But we knew this had to neither be a backwards moving nostalgic trip only nor a beginning of a movie without a satisfying conclusion, and that was part of the balancing act — embracing what we have inherited and using that where and whenever possible to tell a story that hasn’t been seen yet. We also knew that certain things were inevitable in our minds but that didn’t mean it would be inevitable for whoever came in next.“When Rian who I admire enormously and adore, came on board, we met and talked with him about all the things we were working on and playing with, and he as a spectacular writer and director has taken those things and has written an AMAZING script that I think will be an incredible next chapter, some of which incorporating things we were thinking of and other things are things we could never of dreamed of.”
Johnson’s track record as writer-director is nothing to sneeze at. The eighth chapter in the Skywalker saga is his fourth motion picture, following 2006’s “Brick” (which garnered 80% positive reviews among critics polled by Rotten Tomatoes), 2009’s “The Brothers Bloom” (66%) and 2012’s “Looper” (93%).
Find all of /Film’s story on the matter here.
