We’ve been hearing rumors from all over, Deadline.com reported it Thursday, and now StarWars.com has confirmed that Oscar-winning screenwriter Michael Arndt will be writing the next Star Wars movie The message posted today on the official Star Wars site said:

As pre-production of Star Wars: Episode VII begins, Lucasfilm has confirmed that award-winning writer Michael Arndt will write the screenplay for the new Star Wars film. As revealed in the ongoing video series posted here on StarWars.com, Kathleen Kennedy and George Lucas have begun story conferences with Arndt. Arndt won an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for writing Little Miss Sunshine (2006), and was nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay for writing Toy Story 3 (2010).

And Arndt also wrote the script for the upcoming film version of the second book in the Hunger Games trilogy, Catching Fire. He also did the final rewrite of next April’s Tom Cruise science fiction thriller Oblivion, so there’s his genre experience. His name’s also attached to the Phineas and Ferb movie scheduled for 2014. So… is he the right guy for this project? It’s hard to say, based on what we can currently see of his work — two good films, but neither one is in the same genre as Star Wars, and we won’t see Oblivion until the Spring. Still, we do know the guy can write, and he surely knows how the Star Wars fan base feels about the franchise. In addition, reports say he’s a huge fan of Star Wars, an expert who’s done extensive analysis of the original trilogy. How confident are you about this? If, as rumored, Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, and Harrison Ford make appearances, is that enough to get you excited for Episode VII? Ah, it doesn’t matter; we’ll all be queuing up when it arrives, whoever’s involved. But you can speculate away in the comments about what this is going to be like and what you hope you’ll get from Arndt and the movie when it arrives.