When Colin Trevorrow was dropped as the director of Star Wars: Episode IX, Disney went straight for JJ Abrams, who brought the franchise back to great success with The Force Awakens.
But while Abrams is a huge lover of the franchise (TFA is essentially a big budget fan remake), he almost turned down the chance to come back.
Speaking to Fast Company, he said: "I was working on some other things, and... it all happened pretty quickly.
"The whole thing was a crazy leap of faith. And there was an actual moment when I nearly said, 'No, I'm not going to do this.' I was trepidatious to begin with, getting involved, because I love Star Wars so much and felt like it was... it was almost, on a personal level, a dangerous thing to get too close to something that you care that much about.
"And yet, with Force Awakens, I feel like... we got in there, we got to do something. And I left loving Star Wars as much as I did when I got there... And to ask to have that happen again, I felt a little bit like I was playing with fire. Like, why go back? We managed to make it work. What the hell am I thinking?"
He said that his wife Katie eventually convinced him to finish the story he began, even though there were huge time constraints thanks to a two-year window and no script.
The upcoming Star Wars Celebration will take place on Friday (12 April) and will hopefully reveal the title and first footage of Episode IX, which is due to be released in UK cinemas on 19 December and US cinemas on 20 December.
Joe Anderton is a freelance news writer and resident Welsh person at Digital Spy, having worked there since 2016.
In his time he's covered a host of live events, interviewed celebrities big and small and crowbarred a countless amount of great/awful (delete as appropriate) puns into articles.
A big fan of TV and movies both mainstream and obscure, Joe's main interest is in video gaming. Although particularly a PlayStation gamer, he plays across Xbox, Nintendo and PC/Steam Deck, and likes to keep tabs on many games he's not got the time to play.
Joe currently does not use Twitter, but he only ever used it to tell people to watch the film Help! I'm a Fish (which you really should do).
