Earlier this year, Josh Trank was named as the director on the second Star Wars standalone film, set to be released in 2018. Trank had previously directed Chronicle and was (at the time) shooting the Fox reboot The Fantastic Four, with a screenplay co-written by Rebels Executive Producer Simon Kinberg.
Kinberg apparently recommended Trank to Kathleen Kennedy as a potential Star Wars director, given that Trank is a Star Wars fan who seemed to be a director to watch. Things may not have gone to plan, however.
Firstly, here are a few posts from a poster in a thread on the Louisiana State University-focused message board TigerDroppings.com:
After the crap Trank pulled in Baton Rouge, i doubt he ever directs a studio picture again. He will certainly never work for Fox. At this point that F4 reboot might never get released.
[…]
A buddy of mine was on the crew. Trank showed up to set late or so high he couldn’t speak almost everyday. Some days he didn’t show up at all. He treated crew terribly. He trashed the house the production company rented for him. From what I’m told he did a couple hundred grand worth of damage.
[…]
Trank did so much damage to the house that Jim Gianopulos came to Baton Rouge and personally apologized to the owners. Trust me, Trank’s career is done. There will be no major study [sic] sequels or spin offs for him. He’ll be lucky to get the sequel to a Stabbing at Leia’s 21st Birthday.
A second poster backed-up the assertion that Trank was high throughout the shoot, turning up late or not at all. Now granted, this is not the most credible source of information.
That was in late November. By the 10th of this month, Devin Faraci was tweeting the following:
Today, Latino Review’s El Mayimbe posted this tweet:
Now Drew McWeeny writes the following on his blog:
One of the things I’ve been fascinated by is this sudden push where studios are handing over giant franchise movies to fairly untested filmmakers. Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been hearing some stories about how those jobs have worked out. In one case, I hear things are going very well, and people seem to dig the end result. In another case, I’m hearing that the director has stopped taking phone calls from the studio and they’re looking for someone to supervise reshoots.
If I had to guess, the former case would be Colin Trevorrow (whom he later alludes to in the piece) and his work on Jurassic World; the latter case would be… Josh Trank and The Fantastic Four.
Putting it all together, the scuttlebut seems to be that Trank has maybe ended his career before it ever really began. Or maybe this is all hearsay, and none of this is actually true.
But if it is true, the odds of Trank making a Star Wars movie seem very slim indeed.
Star Wars Always 
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