Colin Trevorrow will no longer be working on Star Wars: Episode 9, it has been confirmed.
The Jurassic World director has been attached to the project for more than two years, but Disney and Lucasfilm issued a short statement on Tuesday (September 5) revealing that Lucasfilm and Trevorrow have now parted ways.
"Lucasfilm and Colin Trevorrow have mutually chosen to part ways on Star Wars: Episode IX," the statement posted on StarWars.com read.
"Colin has been a wonderful collaborator throughout the development process but we have all come to the conclusion that our visions for the project differ. We wish Colin the best and will be sharing more information about the film soon."
The film was expected to hit cinemas on May 24, 2019, with production set to start early next year. There's no news yet on a replacement director, or whether this change will delay production.
Trevorrow was confirmed as Episode 9's director in August 2015, but fans have been unsure of the choice from the start and opinions have only gotten murkier following the recent critical panning of the director's latest movie The Book of Henry.
Back in July, Trevorrow insisted to Star Wars fans that he was still the right person for the job after the bad reviews, adding that the challenge for him was making a film that fans would appreciate.
"I think the challenge for me is to recognise that everyone has their own personal relationship with these stories, and it's different depending on who you are," he said.
The news comes just a few months after another Star Wars project lost its directors when Christopher Miller and Phil Lord left the Han Solo spin-off film due to creative differences, with Ron Howard ultimately taking over the project.
Episode 9 will conclude the new trilogy of films that began with JJ Abrams' The Force Awakens and will continue with Rian Johnson's The Last Jedi when it's released in cinemas later this year.
The film has already been hit with a few setbacks, including the death of actress Carrie Fisher late last year, which meant that the filmmakers had to "start over" as Trevorrow had previously said her character General Leia was intended to be at the very centre of Episode 9.
Earlier this year, it was also announced that Harry Potter and the Cursed Child writer Jack Thorne was brought on to work on a new draft of the Episode 9 script.
