STAR WARS: EPISODE 8 May Be Getting a Rewrite Because of Fan Reaction to THE FORCE AWAKENS
We're still about a year and a half away from the release of Star Wars: Episode VIII, but now that fans are finally starting to come down from the high of The Force Awakens, attention is turning to the future of the Star Wars universe. If a new report from The Wrap's Jeff Sneider on Meet The Movie Press (via ScreenCrush) is correct, Johnson is going to be doing a bit of rewrite work on his script for Episode VIII due to fan response to The Force Awakens.
You can listen to the discussion at about the 23 minute mark here, but the gist of it goes like this: Johnson is reportedly doing a small rewrite of the script to minimize two new female characters that are supposed to appear in the movie (people like Gina Rodriguez, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, and Bel Powley have been mentioned in association with these parts, but no official casting news has been released as of yet). The reason he's making those roles smaller is because either Johnson himself or the top brass at Lucasfilm wants to further flesh out the roles of Rey, Finn, and Poe instead of spending too much time introducing new characters.
As much as I'm all about seeing cool new female characters in the Star Wars universe, I've gotta say this sounds like a smart move on Johnson's part. Rey, Finn, and Poe are the new lifeblood of this franchise, and spending as much time with them as possible seems like a great idea to me.