When it was announced back in January that J.J. Abrams would be helming the new ‘Star Wars’, he had his fair share of positive and negative reactions. Regardless of what people think, he’ll be the man to bring George Lucas’ galaxy far, far away to a whole new generation of people thanks to this new era of Lucasfilms and Disney. Back when the announcement was made, the filmmaker didn’t have much to say about the project, but now that he’s out doing press for his upcoming film, ‘Star Trek Into Darkness’, he’ll likely be talking about ‘Star Wars’ whether he wants to or not.

Recently, Abrams spoke with Empire Magazine in one of his first major interviews to promote the May release of the next ‘Star Trek’ movie. In that interview, he talked about a few things related to ‘Star Wars’.

First, he mentioned his approach to ‘Episode VII’, or rather, the lack of one at the moment:

“I don’t know because we’re just getting started. So it’s a great question that I hope I’ll have a good answer to when I know what the answer is. There are infinitely more questions than answers right now, but to me, they’re not that dissimilar. Though I came at these both from very different places, where they both meet is a place of ‘Ooh, that’s really exciting.’ And even though I was never a Star Trek fan, I felt like there was a version of it that would make me excited, that I would think ‘that’s cool, that feels right, I actually would want to see that.

How we were going to get there, what the choices were going to be, who was going to be in it – all of those things I knew would have to be figured out, but it was all based on a foundation of this indescribable, guttural passion for something that could be. It’s a similar feeling that I have with Star Wars. I feel like I can identify a hunger for what I would want to see again and that is an incredibly exciting place to begin a project. The movies, the worlds could not be more different but that feeling that there’s something amazing here is the thing that they share.”

Then he went on to talk about how he came to land the ‘Star Wars’ gig. Initially, he publicly announced that he wasn’t interested in taking the job when everyone was making their picks as to who should direct the first film in the series under the Disney banner. In this quote, he sheds some light on his change of heart and what other big time Hollywood director was in on it:

“My knee-jerk reaction was that I’m in the middle of working on the Star Trek movie and I can’t even consider it. But then time went by and I got further along working on the movie and getting to a place where I had done most of the heavy lifting. So when I met with Kathy Kennedy we just started discussing it and I was able to actually engage in the conversation. I went down to tell Katie, my wife, and I said ‘I had just a very interesting conversation with Kathy.’ That was the beginning. I will say that Steven [Spielberg] was very encouraging of Star Wars. It’s funny because I talked to him about it and it turned out he knew all about what was going on.”

Since it’s still early on in the process, we’ll probably get better updates as time goes on. This is quite an undertaking, so let’s not rush the man to make progress. After all, as a ‘Star Wars’ fan, I’m sure that he wants to get it just right.

At the moment, ‘Star Wars: Episode VII’ is scheduled for a 2015 release, but that’s not necessarily set in stone yet. As for his next big screen outing, ‘Star Trek Into Darkness’ opens on May 17, 2013.