OFFICIAL NEWS Carrie Fisher will be in Episode IX.

I think Rian said somewhere that because of Carrie's passing they decided to use all the scenes Leia appeared in.

 

That little clip is so good.. I love the "I don't care!"

 

Good Morning America - Todd Fisher on Carrie's continuing legacy: 'There's a lot more to come' (Todd Fisher quote archive)

 

That was Princess Leia's Theme in The Rise of Skywalker teaser. Episode IX was supposed to be her time to get some focus like Han did in VII and Luke did in VIII.

 

I've been growing this feeling that IX was intended to be focused on Leia, as Han and Luke were in VII and VIII, as you say. This may have been the reason for changing directors/writers for IX. I guess we may never know.

 

J. J. Abrams: “You don’t recast [Leia] and you don’t suddenly have her disappear. The weird miracle of having a number of scenes from ‘Force Awakens’ that had gone unused, looking at those scenes and starting to understand that there was an actually a way to use those scenes and continue her story, so that it would be her. The idea of having a CGI character was off the table… we said, ‘What if we could write scenes about her so it’s her performance?'” “Every day, it hits me that she’s not here. It’s so surreal because we are working with her still, if that makes sense. She’s in scenes. She’s alive in scenes.” (April 12, 2019)

J. J. Abrams: “When we first started working on the story, we realized immediately we could not tell the story without [Carrie Fisher as Leia]. There had been a number of scenes that we had filmed and not used for Episode VII and I compiled the footage and watched it and it was like finding this impossible answer to an impossible question. We could tell her story with these pieces that she had shot so she’s in the movie – it’s her she’s in the film. She’s performing these scenes.” (April 12, 2019)

J. J. Abrams: (1:10) “Then we went back and looked at the footage that we had cut which I had bemoaned doing at the time on Episode VII and we realized we had the answer to our impossible question weirdly in this footage [of Leia].” (April 12, 2019)

 

There's not really a good place to say this without it being slightly off-topic, but I think it's important to remember that Lucasfilm's original mindset was that they were going to finish the Sequel Trilogy without Carrie's involvement and simply write Leia out of the story, having decided against using CGI or archive footage to include the character in Episode IX despite having received permission to do so from her surviving family.

However, because Colin Treverow's plans for Episode IX were significantly "Leia-centric", rewriting the story to not include her ultimately turned out to be impossible despite numerous rewrites and the hiring of Jack Thorne, the man who worked with JK Rowling to create Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, and so Treverow was fired.

It wasn't until Abrams came in that Lucasfilm reevaluated its earlier decision and embraced the idea of including Carrie in Episode IX through archive footage.

 

Making Star Wars - Rumor: Did Billie Lourd help bring back Princess Leia in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker?
Rumors suggest Carrie Fisher's daughter was a stand-in for certain sequences.

Spoiler

 

Thanks for the bullet points. Billie in her mother's role sounds very touching.

As for the article and the ' Bad parental choices' popping up again, sounds like more folks being scapegoats and being thrown under the bus.

 

https://ibb.co/Y7XSvdp

 

Really great words by JJ. She always will be.

 

Very true. I always wanted to see Leia really use the Force. Surrounded by First Order goons and Troopers, drops her weapons, and then drops her gaze. Looks up with a grin and raises her hands....BAAAAAAAAM. Force push that knocks out dozens and clears the way for escape. Insert witty Leia quip and done.