Rumors have been floating for a while now that Disney was eyeing Jurassic World director Colin Trevorrow to helm the still-unsubtitled Star Wars: Episode IX. Speculation ran high that the company might make the announcement at Comic-Con back in July, but instead fans just got a passel of behind the scenes footage, a free concert, and one of Harrison Ford’s rare, precious smiles.
Apparently the company was holding back the news so that it could be announced at Disney’s own miniature Comic-Con, the D23 Expo, which is going on this weekend near Disneyland in California. In the midst of a much longer panel covering all of the company’s live-action efforts, including its Marvel films and projects like the live-action Jungle Book, Walt Disney Studios chairman Alan Horn confirmed the rumor: Trevorrow, director of the third-highest-grossing film in the history of cinema, will follow J.J. Abrams and Rian Johnson in directing an entry in the latest trilogy of films. (Please begin crafting your jokes about Bantha Squad, and the difficulties of piloting an X-Wing while wearing high heels now, because you’ve only got roughly four years before Trevorrow’s Episode IX hits theaters in 2019.)