After a few months of wild speculation in Hollywood, the announcement yesterday that JJ Abrams would be directing the new Disney STAR WARS movie was a
bit of a surprise (and blew up the Twitterverse). He'd publicly taken himself out of the running last fall, saying he had a number of his own projects to work on after the new STAR TREK movie was done. But either this was a PR fakeout or something convinced him otherwise as now he will be reviving the STAR WARS franchise with the new film, currently being scripted by Michael Arndt.
Given the way Abrams revived the defunct STAR TREK franchise a few years ago, this news bodes extremely well for STAR WARS fans. It will be exciting to have him bring the franchise back from the dead after Lucas's 1,2,3 prequels which may have looked cool but were dramatic duds.
Abrams has been a vocal and rabid fan of that galaxy far far away so he will certainly bring to it his passion and his talents for making entertaining blockbusters that are not stupid. The new movie is due summer 2015.
