Star Wars Will Get Openly Gay Character, JJ Abrams Says

Future installments in the iconic and long-running Star Wars series will "of course" feature openly gay characters, The Force Awakens director JJ Abrams said this week.

"Of course!" Abrams said at a pre-Oscar event at the headquarters of his Bad Robot company, according to a report from The Daily Beast. "When I talk about inclusivity it's not excluding gay characters. It's about inclusivity. So of course."

He went on to say, "To me, the fun of Star Wars is the glory of possibility. So it seems insanely narrow-minded and counterintuitive to say that there wouldn't be a homosexual character in that world."

Abrams isn't directing Star Wars: Episode VIII, as that duty is in the hands of Rian Johnson. However, Abrams is on-board as an executive producer for the film, due out in 2017.

The Force Awakens opened in December and quickly became one of the biggest movies of all time. It has made more than $2 billion worldwide and currently stands as the No. 3 movie ever in terms of global box office, only behind Titanic and Avatar.

As Polygon points out, author Chuck Wendig's 2015 Star Wars novel Aftermath--which is canon--featured an openly gay character. Wendig caught some amount of flak for this.

The next entry in the film series, Rogue One, arrives in December.