Josh Trank quit Star Wars because of 'unhealthy' scrutiny
The director said that leaving the franchise was the 'hardest decision I’ve ever had to make'
Josh Trank, who stepped down as the director of the untitled Star Wars standalone film earlier this year, has given his reasons for leaving the franchise.
The 30-year-old, whose departure from the project was announced on May 1, said that he found the level of scrutiny he was subject to "not healthy". Trank has been working for the past four years on the Fantastic Four film, and says that he felt that getting involved with another major franchise would be a mistake.
"I want to do something original after this because I’ve been living under public scrutiny, as you’ve seen, for the last four years of my life," he told the Los Angeles Times. "And it’s not healthy for me right now in my life. I want to do something that’s below the radar.
"At first I was like, 'I’m just not going to say anything because it will blow over,'" he added. "But I was shocked – it just hasn’t blown over. People get so excited to raise their pitchforks. I knew that this was going to be questioned and it was going to come under scepticism as to why I left Star Wars. And it was hard. It was the hardest decision I’ve ever had to make in my life.
"It feels sometimes like I’m living in a Paddy Chayefsky script or something like that. Every misconception that could possibly be made about this has been made to a hilariously satirical degree. And it’s people who haven’t met me before. If they met me – I don’t know, I feel like I’m a pretty harmless person."
There was speculation that Trank was struggling with the pressure of making Fantastic Four, and that he had clashed with Simon Kinberg, a writer and producer on both that film and the Star Wars spinoff.
But Kinberg, who was present at the LA Times interview, denied those rumours. "This, I would say, is particularly cruel," he said. "I haven’t really seen this level of vehemence against a filmmaker. And it’s surreal and unfair."
There are several Star Wars spinoff films in the works, in addition to the main series. First up will be Gareth Edwards' Rogue One, starring British actress Felicity Jones, which opens on December 16 2016.
It's rumoured that Matthew Vaughn will direct another standalone film, which will apparently feature a young Han Solo and Boba Fett.
