Back in May, it was announced that Kathleen Kennedy and Lucasfilm would continue a ‘Star Wars’ tradition and shoot ‘Episode VII’ across the pond in the United Kingdom. However, director J.J. Abrams showed a little hesitance in filming outside of California because of a number of varying factors including uprooting his family. Well, he eventually came around and shared his plans to move to London before the end of the year to prepare for production on the highly anticipated new adventure in a galaxy far, far away at Pinewood Studios. Now, he’s opening up again to talk about his initial reluctance and a number of other things.

In an interview with Total Film, Abrams shares that while he tried his best to keep things in Los Angeles, he’s excited to start filming a project that is very near and dear to his heart in London:

“[Filming in London] is something that I’ve always intended to do. But I’m torn because I have done everything I can to keep the production of my projects in Los Angeles. Yet the opportunity to work with UK crews is something that has always been a dream of mine. Of course, that dream existed prior to me being married and having a family, so the reality of making a movie like that for any period of time becomes much more difficult when there are other people that you desperately love and care for involved.”

It’s good that the filmmaker has a positive outlook on the situation that is forcing him to step outside of his comfort zone. After all, you can’t really blame him for not wanting to leave his family, right?

Later on in the same interview, Abrams also talks about his experience with Lawrence Kasdan as the two currently work on the script for ‘Star Wars: Episode VII’. Recently, the pair took over writing duties from Michael Arndt and it sounds as if they’re having an enjoyable team up:

“Working with Larry has been one of the most surreal joys of my life. We’ve had a lot of fun working together. He’s an incredible guy and an inspiring and spectacular writer.”

Finally, another source of rumored unhappiness stemmed from the original release date of the movie, which was summer 2015. However, Disney has pushed the release date back to December 2015, which takes a good bit of pressure off of the creative types working on making this thing the best it could possibly be. While speaking to MTV, Abrams comments on the “infinitely better situation”, as well as R2-D2, who can be seen in the first official picture from the shoot, joining the ‘Episode VII’ cast, returning for another installment of the franchise, but potentially without C-3PO. You can see what he has to say in the video below:

While we didn’t really discover anything new about ‘Star Wars: Episode VII’ from Abrams’ comments, we were provided with a vague yet positive update on the project. Plus, the director is notoriously secretive about his work, so we had to know that we wouldn’t be getting much out of him. Although hopefully we can get some substantial update on the film soon to satisfy our immense hunger for new info on the next ‘Star Wars’ movie.

‘Star Wars: Episode VII’ blasts off into theaters on December 18, 2015.