When Michael Arndt was 'relieved' of his Star Wars writing duties, the internet lost it's collective mind and wondered if the sky was falling. What kind of idiot gets himself replaced on a Star Wars gig? Oh, wait, Josh Trank did though....
We suggested everyone watch Netflix and chill.
Now that the official Force Awakens movie poster has been released, we can see that the Oscar winner has received a formal screenwriters credit on the film and that adds up to work must have been used in some substantive form.
This should really not be a surprise as Kathleen Kennedy said nice things about Arndt's work at the time:
"Michael Arndt has done a terrific job bringing us to this point and we have an amazing filmmaking and design team in place already prepping for production."
Given it is thought JJ and Kasdan did a story based script, one could assume Arndt's work that was kept was likely in the mode of ideas, thematic concepts, characters, names and places. It doesn't just have to be character dialogue!
The story of Star Wars film scripts has always been interesting - it's a tale in itself of how Lucas brought Star Wars into being. Two interesting moments are the role that Leigh Brackett had in Empire and what Johnathan Hales did to deserve a credit on Attack of the Clones (and who did some uncredited work!).