Apparently Colin Trevorrow Was Fired From STAR WARS: EPISODE IX Because He Was Difficult

Last week it was announced by Lucasfilm that they were no longer working with director Colin Trevorrow on Star Wars: Episode IX. They said it was due to creative differences, but we all knew there was going to be something more to it.

After Rian Johnson said he full creative freedom on Star Wars: The Last Jedi and he loved working on the film with Lucasfilm, I knew there had to be something more to Trevorrow's story. I speculated that the reason Lucasfilm let him go was due to personality differences. I said, "If a person is difficult to work with, the studio doesn't want to work with them. It sounds like that was definitely the case with Lord and Miller." Now new details have surfaced saying that was the case with Trevorrow as well. 

In this case, it sounds like Trevorrow's ego was just over the top. Vulture spoke with an inside studio source that is said to have direct knowledge of what is happening behind the scenes. They say that "Trevorrow’s firing may have come more directly as a consequence of being 'difficult.'" The studio executive offers some insight saying::

“During the making of Jurassic World, he focused a great deal of his creative energies on asserting his opinion. But because he had been personally hired by Spielberg, nobody could say, ‘You’re fired.’ Once that film went through the roof and he chose to do Henry, [Trevorrow] was unbearable. He had an egotistical point of view— and he was always asserting that.”

It was then explained that Trevorrow's relationship with the Lucasfilm team became "unmanageable" while they were trying to get the script in the right place. They apparently have gone through several versions of the script. It's then revealed that when The Book of Henry flopped with critics and the box office, that gave the studio a good reason to fire him.

“When the reviews for Book of Henry came out, there was immediately conjecture that Kathy was going to dump him because they weren’t thrilled with working with him anyway. He’s a difficult guy. He’s really, areally, really confident. Let’s call it that.”

Trevorrow has previously described his own personality as a filmmaker telling Esquire:

“Directors require a level of confidence that can border on the delusional. You have to push it right up to the edge of arrogance, but never cross the line.”

Sounds like he may have crossed that line and it cost him his job. The source went on to talk about Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy saying:

“There’s one gatekeeper when it comes to Star Wars and it’s Kathleen Kennedy. If you rub Kathleen Kennedy the wrong way — in any way — you’re out. You’re done. A lot of these young, new directors want to come in and say, ‘I want to do this. I want to do that.’ A lot of these guys — Lord and Miller, Colin Trevorrow — got very rich, very fast and believed a lot of their own hype. And they don’t want to play by the rules. They want to do shit differently. And Kathleen Kennedy isn’t going to fuck around with that.”

So, Lucasfilm isn't really firing these directors for creative differences. They just don't like working with difficult people. That's completely understandable. I wouldn't want to work with egotistical difficult people either!