Following high profile casualties like Josh Trank, Phil Lord and Chris Miller, Colin Trevorrow has become the latest director to depart a Star Wars film. This of course means there's now a coveted vacancy behind the camera on Episode IX, with no one currently attached to the top job on the 2019 film that will close off the saga's sequel trilogy. Who will Lucasfilm parachute in to save the day? For some of our thoughts on who might fit the bill, read on...
Rian Johnson
The director of The Last Jedi would seem to be the no-brainer choice to carry on into Episode IX, turning his Star Wars experience into a seamless back-to-back gig. Johnson, who started out with the indie-cred likes of Brick and Looper, appears to have fitted perfectly into the Disney/Lucasfilm machine, having been given free rein to mould the story into exactly what he wanted. Johnson is almost certainly at the top of the studio's Trevorrow replacement wishlist. If you're placing bets, expect to get short odds on this one.
Ron Howard
Currently on another Star Wars rescue mission having replaced Phil Lord and Chris Miller behind the cameras of the standalone Han Solo movie, Lucas alumnus Howard is already regarded in-house as a safe pair of hands. It's unlikely that he'd want to jump immediately into another Star Wars fixer-upper, but there's something appealing about him slipping into the role of Lucasfilm's very own Winston Wolfe.
Tony Gilroy
Veteran writer of the early Bourne movies, and director of the fourth one, The Bourne Legacy, Gilroy was dropped onto Rogue One in its late stages for rewrites and reshoots. Whether he "rescued" that film as such is a matter of speculation: Gareth Edwards certainly retained ownership as the film rolled out last Christmas (and accepted an Empire award for it last spring). But it's not unthinkable that Gilroy might be rewarded for his efforts with a short-notice promotion in these new circumstances.
Patty Jenkins
The multi-award-winning director of Monster this year knocked Wonder Woman into spectacular shape, giving the nascent DC movie universe its much-needed first bona fide critical and commercial hit. Across the tracks at Marvel, however, she had a far less smooth ride as the original director of Thor: The Dark World: departing, like Trevorrow on Episode IX, over those pesky "creative differences". She'd be a great choice to guide Rey towards the conclusion of her narrative arc, but whether she'd want to be back under Disney's wing is another matter.
Ryan Coogler
Coogler directed the excellent indie Fruitvale Station before delivering the crunchy Rocky rebootquel Creed. Most recently, he's been wrestling Marvel's Black Panther for release next February. Post-production allowing, his schedule would seem to be open.
Taika Waititi
Sticking with indie-turned-Marvel directors, What We Do In The Shadows' Taiki Waititi looks already to have delivered a massively fun space adventure in the upcoming Thor: Ragnarok. Frankly, we'd love to see what he might do given the chance to fling things around in the Star Wars toybox, but only if Julian 'Ricky Baker' Dennison can cameo as an angry Ewok.
Jon Watts
Then there's Jon Watts, who jumped from Clown to Cop Car and straight into Spider-Man: Homecoming, which he made look breezily effortless. Like Waititi, he has the ability to keep that energetic snap to a Star Wars universe that's perhaps in danger of turning to the dark – or at least the dour – side.
Ava DuVernay
And on a similar trajectory – although minus the Marvel endgame so far – is Ava DuVernay: director of Middle Of Nowhere and Selma, but most recently adapting the family fantasy sci-fi spectacle A Wrinkle In Time for Disney. For a time this summer, its trailer was actually getting more online hits than footage from The Last Jedi. Stakes are high.
Joe Johnston
Johnston is a veteran of the original Star Wars trilogy (in the miniature and optical effects units on Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back, rising to Art Director on Return Of The Jedi and Production Designer on the two Ewok movies). He directed Captain America: The First Avenger for Disney/Marvel. And he's even had experience diving into a beleaguered production at short notice, having replaced Mark Romanek as director of 2010's The Wolfman. He certainly has the CV for it, then, but is currently expected to shepherd Narnia's belated return with The Silver Chair.
Steven Spielberg
Best mates with George Lucas, and the director of sci-fi classics like Close Encounters and Minority Report, Spielberg superficially seems like a dream Star Wars director. Sadly, however, he's already ruled himself out. "I’m never going to make a Star Wars film," he said last year. "That’s not my genre. It’s certainly my buddy’s – the Thomas Edison of science fiction, George Lucas, who created the entire series. But that was never for me. I’m just a fan; I’m just with everybody else in the audience watching them."
Kathryn Bigelow
Less about the popcorn entertainment these days, preferring to get her hands dirty on heavyweight, hot-topic projects like The Hurt Locker, Zero Dark Thirty and most recently Detroit. Her visceral sensibilities, and no-nonsense razor-sharp smarts would be a gift to the Star Wars universe though. She can certainly do dark, but she also excels at breathless action. The Bigelow of Point Break in a galaxy far, far away would be a sight to behold.
Darren Aronofsky
Dancing around the edges of the mainstream, Aronofsky has had popular hits like The Wrestler and Black Swan, and dallied with blockbuster scale for Noah. But he's very much his own man, and you'd have to assume that the compromises he'd have to be willing to make to take on a job of work that essentially belongs to other people, would not sit well. Best leave him to madness like Mother!.
Edgar Wright
Anyone who's watched Wright's work from Spaced and beyond is well aware of his Star Wars fandom. But again, whether he'd allow his singular idiosyncratic style to be reined in and bent to the purposes of the Disney/Lucas machine is questionable. His experience on Marvel's Ant-Man – "creative differences" again – suggests otherwise.
George Miller
As with some others we've mentioned, there's a sense here that George "Mad Max" Miller is too much of a maverick to be comfortable with a Star Wars gig. To their credit, Warner Bros. gave him a huge budget and then left him alone to deliver the extraordinary, visionary lunacy of Fury Road. But his methods were so off the wall that even his star Tom Hardy had no real idea of the film they were making even while they were making it. Miller has his own franchise to play with by his own rules. Let's leave him there where he's happiest.
Peter Jackson
Six blockbuster Middle Earth movies, plus a King Kong, prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that Jackson has the vision, the talent, and the studio nous to make a success of a Star Wars outing. He does, however, keep insisting that he's absolutely done with massive-scale filmmaking and wants now to devote himself to smaller, more personal projects.
Kevin Smith
Smith loves Star Wars as much as he loves Batman – which is a lot. Given a tour of the The Force Awakens' Millennium Falcon set by J.J. Abrams, he was actually reduced to tears of joy. Given his own shot at the universe he'd be like a kid in a candy store. But he's always been circumspect about his talent – or lack thereof – as a visual filmmaker. Talking heads are his forte. Big budgets, FX and action... not so much. A film about open mic night at the Mos Eisley Cantina would be more his thing than Episode IX.
Joss Whedon
The brain behind Buffy and the man who wrangled The Avengers into their first and second joint outings, Whedon also has space-Western previous in the short-lived Firefly and its film spin-off Serenity. He might be susceptible to the Star Wars call then, but after Age Of Ultron he seemed burned out, saying it felt wrong to have spent years on someone else's material, rather than creating his own. Early last year he announced he would categorically not work with Disney/Marvel again. That may well extend to the similar Disney/LucasFilm set-up.
Luc Besson
Another director who's used to doing things his own way – in Besson's case through his own studio, Europa. Plus, while The Fifth Element was brilliantly bonkers sci-fi, when he recently turned his attention to something along Star Wars lines, he gave us the balls-out awfulness of Valerian.
Michelle MacLaren
McLaren has been on the edge of making her first feature film for a while, following stints directing big TV shows like Game Of Thrones, Breaking Bad, The Walking Dead, Westworld and, most recently, The Deuce. She was the original incumbent behind Wonder Woman's cameras until ye olde "creative differences" reared their ugly head. She's currently in pre-production on WWII drama The Nightingale, however, which might be a slightly less fraught debut than a Star Wars.
David Lynch
Scoff you may but George Lucas asked Lynch to direct Return Of The Jedi back in 1981. He said no and made Dune instead. But if he hadn't, Episode VI might have looked something like this...