The 30-year-old filmmaker, who says he wants to take a ‘different path’, was due to make the second anthology film due for release in 2018

The rebooted Star Wars franchise has suffered a blow after filmmaker Josh Trank stepped down from directing one of the upcoming new films in the series.

Trank, 30, director of the sci-fi movie Chronicle and the upcoming Fantastic Four movie, was selected to direct the second Star Wars Anthology film due out in 2018. The three anthology films will intersect a new trilogy in the franchise that kicks off with Star Wars: The Force Awakens in December.

But Trank said on Friday he was pursuing other “creative opportunities”.

“After a year of having the incredible honor of developing with the wonderful and talented people at Lucasfilm, I’m making a personal decision to move forward on a different path,” Trank said in a statement on StarWars.com.

“I’ve put a tremendous amount of thought into this, and I know deep down in my heart that I want to pursue some original creative opportunities.“

Lucasfilm’s vice president of development, Kiri Hart, said: “We are grateful for the energy and love of Star Wars that he brought to the process.”

No replacement for Trank has been named yet.

The Force Awakens, directed by JJ Abrams, is the first of a new Star Wars trilogy being produced by Walt Disney since it purchased the franchise from Lucasfilm in 2012 for $4.05bn. It is expected to be a huge box office success later this year, and its two trailers have already amassed millions of views amid frenzied fan interest

Star Wars Anthology: Rogue One, directed by Gareth Edwards and starring Felicity Jones, is the first of the standalone films and is due out in 2016.

Star Wars, created by filmmaker George Lucas, grossed more than $4.4 billion at the worldwide box office since 1977 with six films and has become embedded in pop culture, spawning a legion of devoted fans.

Franchise stars Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher will all return in The Force Awakens.