J.J. Abrams says Rian Johnson’s ‘Star Wars: Episode VIII’ is already written

With Star Wars: The Force Awakens less than two months away, co-writer/director J.J. Abrams will be doing a lot of interviews. In his latest, Abrams revealed some info on another Star Wars movie, Rian Johnson’s Episode VIII.

In an interview with Wired, Abrams said that Johnson has completed his script for Episode VIII and that he has been working with the Looper filmmaker to make sure the transition is easy. Abrams and co-writer Lawrence Kasdan did meet with Johnson and Ram Bergman, who is producing the new film.

“The script for VIII is written. I’m sure rewrites are going to be endless, like they always are. But what Larry and I did was set up certain key relationships, certain key questions, conflicts. And we knew where certain things were going. We had meetings with Rian and Ram Bergman, the producer of VIII. They were watching dailies when we were shooting our movie. We wanted them to be part of the process, to make the transition to their film as seamless as possible. I showed Rian an early cut of the movie, because I knew he was doing his rewrite and prepping. And as executive producer of VIII, I need that movie to be really good. Withholding serves no one and certainly not the fans. So we’ve been as transparent as possible.”

Abrams had nothing but compliments for Johnson and insisted that the next film will be his movie.

Abrams also had praise for the new Star Wars cast, which includes actors who are so young that they can’t remember a world without the franchise. The new cast includes Adam Driver, Oscar Isaac, John Boyega and Daisy Ridley.

“The key in casting them was finding people who were able to do everything,” Abrams said. “When you think about all that these characters go through, not just in this movie but knowing their work would continue, these individuals needed to be worthy bearers of this burden and opportunity to continue to tell the story.”

The Force Awakens opens on Dec. 18. Episode VIII opens on May 26, 2017.