Josh Trank Explains His Star Wars Departure

Following the Chronicle and Fantastic Four director’s unexpected absence from this year’s Star Wars Celebration, Lucasfilm revealed last month that Josh Trank would not be directing the upcoming, still-untitled second Star Wars Anthology film as was originally planned. Now, in a new interview with The LA Times, Trank shares his side of what happened, claiming that he simply wants to pursue a smaller kind of project.

“I knew that this was going to be questioned,” says Trank, “and it was going to come under skepticism as to why I left ‘Star Wars’. And it was hard. It was the hardest decision I’ve ever had to make in my life… I want to do something original after this, because I’ve been living under public scrutiny, as you’ve seen, for the last four years of my life and it’s not healthy for me right now in my life. I want to do something that’s below the radar.”

Trank also says that, despite online rumors, he remains closely connected with creatives like Lucasfilm VP of development Kiri Hart.

“[T]hey all understood it because this whole experience for me has been very psychologically hard,” he continues. “…It feels sometimes like I’m living in a Paddy Chayefsky script or something like that. Every misconception that could possibly be made about this has been made to a hilariously satirical degree. And it’s people who haven’t met me before. If they met me – I don’t know, I feel like I’m a pretty harmless person.”

The Star Wars Anthology film, tentatively planned for release in 2018, is still without a helmer. Trank’s Fantastic Four, meanwhile, will arrive in theaters on August 7.