Historically, Star Wars films have been shot in desert regions like Tunisia or United Arab Emirates and icy landscapes in Iceland or Norway. There are a lot of different planetary terrains covered in those films, after all. However, for his upcoming gig helming Episode IX, Colin Trevorrow is hoping to be the first Star Wars director to film on location — in space.

“I asked the question, ‘Is it possible for us to shoot IMAX film plates in actual space for Star Wars?'” Trevorrow revealed while speaking during a Sundance Film Festival panel called “Power of Story: The Art of Film”. “And I haven’t gotten an answer yet, but they’ve shot IMAX in space!” (via The Hollywood Reporter)



Trevorrow’s panelmate, Christopher Nolan, sympathized with the director’s desire to take his filmmaking out of the atmosphere. “Funny enough, we had that conversation with Interstellar,” Nolan said. “There’s incredible footage from space now.”

While Trevorrow is hoping to bring IMAX film into space, he intends to shoot the rest of the movie using good, old-fashioned “scope 35 or 65” reels. “The only place where I tend to not be able to attach myself entirely to something shot digitally is when it’s a period film,” he said. “There’s something in my brain that goes, ‘Well, they didn’t have video cameras then.’ [Film] tends to remind us of our memories, of our childhoods, the way we used to see films.” So how does he justify filming Star Wars in the format? “I could never shoot Star Wars on anything but [film] because it’s a period film: It happened a long time ago!” Zing.

Trevorrow, who also shot Jurassic World on film (“This can’t look like two computers fighting — that’s what we kept repeating to ourselves”), isn’t alone in preferring the medium. J.J. Abrams shot The Force Awakens on film, and Rian Johnson intends to do the same for Episode VIII. Gareth Edwards, on the other hand, is currently filming Rogue One: A Star Wars Story using digital cameras.