Colin Trevorrow confirms that the leaked 'Star Wars: Duel of the Fates' artwork is the real deal

Director Colin Trevorrow has confirmed that the recent leak of art work from his axed Star Wars 9 is the genuine article.

Had he stayed the course and not fallen foul of Lucasfilm boss Kathleen Kennedy, he'd have made Star Wars: Duel of the Fates.

Read more: Kennedy on why Trevorrow was ousted from Star Wars 9

But he was fired from the final movie in the current trilogy, after his vision for the film failed to tally with Kennedy's.

Then earlier this month, what appeared to be a leaked script from the film emerged online, doing the rounds on the likes of Reddit.

Thus far, the script has been widely praised as, potentially, a better movie than J.J. Abrams' The Rise of Skywalker ended up being.

Abrams’ saga-ending instalment got mixed reviews from both fans and critics - and is not the lowest-scoring Star Wars movie on Rotten Tomatoes with a pretty lowly 52 percent approval rating.

And now, after a fan demanded answers about so-called leaked concept art from the movie, Trevorrow has put us out of our misery.

The artwork features Rey with a double-bladed light saber, Kylo Ren fighting the ghostly image of Darth Vader, and most upsettingly, R2-D2 looking in rather a bad way, with C-3PO comforting him, head bowed.

Trevorrow replied: “Yes, this is from Duel of the Fates. But I’d never kill R2... he just took a bad hit. Happens to all of us.”

A full gallery of the leaked images can be seen on Imgur, while Yahoo Movies in the US did a run down of the plot last week too.

Trevorrow's movie – which featured a very different story arc for Kylo Ren and very little Palpatine – will never see the light of day, of course.

But we can always daydream about what might have been.