Before Rian Johnson turned in his draft of The Last Jedi, there were a couple of different versions lingering around the offices of Disney and Lucasfilm. According to Daisy Ridley, J.J. Abrams wrote drafts for Star Wars 8 and Star Wars 9 before Rian Johnson took over and wrote what would become Star Wars: The Last Jedi. It's no secret at this point that The Last Jedi wound up being pretty divisive amongst the Star Wars fanbase. There were also quite a few out there who felt that Star Wars: The Force Awakens was too derivative of Star Wars: A New Hope. With that in mind, it's pretty interesting to hear that Abrams may have had a different vision for Star Wars 8.

This information comes from an interview Daisy Ridley did with the French publication, Le Magazine Geek. This particular bit of the interview was translated to English. With that in mind, this should be taken with the appropriate amount of skepticism. Even Ridley says this is what she "thinks" she knows about the situation. In any case, according to her, after writing The Force Awakens, J.J. Abrams wrote drafts for Star Wars 8 and Star Wars 9. Here's what she had to say about it.

"Here's what I think I know. J.J. wrote Episode VII, as well as drafts for VIII & IX. Then Rian Johnson arrived and wrote TLJ entirely. I believe there was some sort of general consensus on the main lines of the trilogy, but apart from that, every director writes and realizes his film in his own way. Rian Johnson and J. J. Abrams met to discuss all of this, although Episode VIII is still his very own work. I believe Rian didn't keep anything from the first draft of Episode VIII."

Considering how divisive The Last Jedi wound up being, this is quite the fascinating development. But could J.J. Abrams really have written full drafts for the next two entries in the new Star Wars trilogy? In December of 2015, just after Star Wars: The Force Awakens was released, it was revealed that Abrams said he wished he were making Star Wars 8 based on Rian Johnson's script. So a draft of what we now know as The Last Jedi was already done at that point.

The truth could lie somewhere in the middle. It would make sense for J.J. Abrams to have possibly outlined where he thought Star Wars 8 and Star Wars 9 could go. At that time, he had no idea he was going to come back to direct Star Wars 9. If that's the case, Rian Johnson could have decided he wanted to do something different than what was outlined, leading us to The Last Jedi.

We may never know what was in that draft of Star Wars 8, if it does indeed exist. Now, J.J. Abrams and Chris Terrio have to figure out how to satisfy fans with their new script for Star Wars 9 after the events of The Last Jedi. It's a tall order, no doubt. Star Wars: Episode IX is set to hit theaters on December 20, 2019, with filming set to begin this summer. This news comes to us courtesy of Star Wars News Net.