Why Colin Trevorrow Left 'Star Wars: Episode 9'

Earlier this week, we found out that Jurassic World director Colin Trevorrow will no longer direct the third installment in the latest Star Wars trilogy, and now stories are coming out that purports to explain why he and Lucasfilm parted ways. It has to do with his vision for the sequel clashing with that of Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy, and if we've learned one thing through all of the behind-the-scenes turmoil that company has experienced over the past couple of years, it's that if you step into battle with Kennedy, you've already lost. You just might not know it yet.

Our own Peter Sciretta has already shot down the theory that Lucasfilm booted Trevorrow because of his work on his ill-fated passion project The Book of Henry, which was critically reviled upon release and currently holds a 22% on Rotten Tomatoes. And now Vulture has spoken with someone familiar with the production of both The Book of Henry and Jurassic World, and their source provides some insight about why Colin Trevorrow left Star Wars.

"During the making of Jurassic World, he focused a great deal of his creative energies on asserting his opinion," the executive explains. "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."

Frankly, a confident or even overly arrogant personality sounds like par for the course in Hollywood, but it seems like where Trevorrow got into trouble was clashing with Kennedy over where the story should go:

"There's one gatekeeper when it comes to Star Wars and it's Kathleen Kennedy," says a veteran movie producer, who has worked with the studio chief. "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."

As I said on a recent episode of /Film Daily, Kennedy has a phenomenal track record and a tremendous amount of pressure on her shoulders to keep one of the world's biggest franchises on track. Movie lovers (myself included) tend to take the side of creative types like directors and writers and turn our noses up at those who have to wrangle them and keep their eye on the larger picture, and this sounds like a case of Trevorrow simply not being the right fit for how Kennedy thought the story should progress. Sometimes the term "creative differences," which tends to get thrown around in dust-ups like these, ends up being the most accurate way to describe the situation, and it sounds like that was the case here.

Check out our list of people who we think could or should direct Star Wars Episode 9.