Nobody’s really had enough time to properly mourn the death of Carrie Fisher, but the people at Disney and Lucasfilm have found themselves in a trickier position than most. Many of them actually worked with her and got to know her, and now they have to figure out what the future of Star Wars will look like without her. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Episode IX director Colin Trevorrow will be meeting with Lucasfilm’s Kathleen Kennedy to try and figure out what to do, since apparently Fisher’s Leia was going to play “a bigger part” in that movie than she does in the upcoming Episode VIII. Filming on Episode IX probably won’t start until next year, so the people involved have some time to make their decisions. But that doesn’t mean it will be an easy task.
Essentially, they can honor Leia and the saga by creating a computer-generated character like Lucasfilm did for Peter Cushing’s Governor Tarkin in Rogue One, or they can honor Fisher herself by not subjecting her to that kind of digital resurrection. The former is probably the simpler option, even if it would require some complicated effects, because the latter would require Lucasfilm to rewrite Episode IX’s story and come up with a way to acknowledge why Leia isn’t around anymore. Does that mean she’d die offscreen between movies? Should the studio do some reshoots on Episode VIII to give Leia a respectful send-off, the way Furious 7 did for Paul Walker?
None of those really seem like ideal solutions, but solving problems like this is exactly what that supposed $50 million life insurance policy was for.