Via thegaurdian.com:
Star Wars: Episode IX director Colin Trevorrow has promised a “profoundly satisfying” answer to mysteries surrounding the parentage of Daisy Ridley’s character in The Force Awakens, Rey.
Speaking to Entertainment Tonight, the Jurassic World film-maker said the Jakku-based scavenger introduced in JJ Abrams’ blockbuster deserved a fully fleshed out back story.
“We’re going to make sure that [the] answer is deeply and profoundly satisfying,” promised Trevorrow, whose film is due to arrive in cinemas in May 2019, two years after Rian Johnson’s Episode VIII. “Rey is a character that is important in this universe, not just in the context of The Force Awakens, but in the entire galaxy,” he continued. “She deserves it. We’ll make sure that that answer is something that feels like it was something that happened a long time ago, far away, and we’re just telling you what happened.”
Trevorrow, 39, also signalled that original Star Wars trilogy stalwarts Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker) and Carrie Fisher (Leia Organa) might still be part of the picture by the time the final instalment in the new triptych rolls around, saying that he can’t wait “to find new places that we can take those characters”.
“They are icons, but they’re also people that have suffered tremendous loss and challenge over the course of all these films,” said the film-maker. “[Episode IX] is something that needs to honour a story that’s been told over a period of 40 years,” he added. “I don’t want to ignore any of it, and I respect all of it. It’s something I think the fan base is going to embrace.”
Abrams has confirmed he knows the parentage of Rey, who many fans have linked to the Skywalker or Kenobi family trees.
Star Wars: The Force Awakens is now expected to hit $2bn at the global box office – becoming only the third movie to do so – before ending its run in multiplexes. Abrams’ film, which has earned $1.75bn so far, has smashed records on both sides of the Atlantic but failed to repeat that barnstorming success on its Chinese debut this weekend.
Analysts now predict a final return of between $2.1bn and $2.4bn for the new episode. Such figures would place the film in second place on the list of all-time highest-grossing films, behind Avatar’s $2.78bn.
