For all of you Star Wars: The Force Awakens fans out there speculating about everything from C3POs Red Arm (seriously, what’s the story there?) and who Rey’s parents are, we’ve got some bad news; you won’t be getting those answers for a while, as the folks from LucasFilm and Disney have announced the release date is to be moved back from May 2017 to December 2017.
Directed by Rian Johnson, the film is expected to start shooting in London next month, with Daisy Ridley, John Boyega and Oscar Isaac returning to star, and new cast member Benico Del Toro joining, reportedly as a bad guy!
Though there is no official or logistical reason to moving the release date back a whole seventh months, it appears that the hugely successful stint The Force Awakens had at the December box office has inspired Disney to follow the same pattern with the eighth episode of the space opera franchise, meaning we’ll once more be spending the entire run up to Christmas counting the days until we return to that Galaxy far, far away…
Although that means Disney will have had us waiting a whole two years between The Force Awakens and the as yet untitled Sequel, we’ll still have Rogue One, a spin off from the main series documenting the efforts of the Rebel Alliance to steal the Death Star plans, to quench our thirst when that’s released later this year.
Even though they’ve broke the bad news that they’re going to keep us waiting even longer to find out exactly what will happen next, Disney did provide us with a silver lining; the fifth installment of Pirates of the Caribbean, subtitled Dead Men Tell No Tales, will take Star Wars: Episode 8’s release date and will hit the cinemas on May 26th, 2017, and will see Jonny Depp return to star as the beloved Captain Jack Sparrow.
What do you think about the news from Disney HQ today? Let us know on Twitter @CelebMix, or in the comments below!