As has been announced, LucasFilm/Disney has hired a fleet of writers to flesh out the world surrounding Star Wars: The Force Awakens. From books that fill in the gaps between Episodes VI and VII, officially-sanctioned literary solo adventures for certain characters, and the upcoming Star Wars Anthology films, it’s clear that the folks in charge are taking that “galaxy far, far away” to a whole new scale. In a recent chat with Vanity Fair, director J.J. Abrams shed some light on the production’s philosophy towards incorporating some of this “beyond this movie” content into the script.

“We’ve obviously had a lot of time (during the development process) to talk about what’s happened outside of the borders of the story that you’re seeing. So there are, of course, references to things, and some are very oblique so that hopefully the audience can infer what the characters are referring to. We used to have more references to things that we pulled out because they almost felt like they were trying too hard to allude to something. I think that the key is—and whether we’ve accomplished that or not is, of course, up to the audience—but the key is that references be essential so that you don’t reference a lot of things that feel like, oh, we’re laying pipe for, you know, an animated series or further movies. It should feel like things are being referenced for a reason.”

The Vanity Fair spread also includes this image of Lupita Nyong’o in performance-capture mode, working on her performance as Maz Kanata:

Star Wars: The Force Awakens is set to premiere on December 18, 2015.

SOURCE: Vanity Fair