Star Wars 8 release date moved to Christmas 2017

If the thought of two Star Wars movies arriving within six months of each other seemed too good to be true, then this latest development won’t come as a surprise.

It seems like Star Wars fever is still riding high on fans.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens may no longer be the biggest movie in America (thanks a lot, Kevin Hart!) but there’s no denying its incredible success as it became the biggest movie in U.S. box office history, and the 3rd biggest movie of all time globally.

The next and eighth episode in the “Star Wars” saga will premiere in December 2017, seven months later than originally planned, Disney and Lucasfilm announced Wednesday.

One movie definitely affected is Steven Spielberg’s “Ready Player One”, a science-fiction release for Warner Bros.

The new release date for the upcoming and hugely anticipated Star Wars Episode VIII will now puts it on the same opening weekend as the The Force Awakens was released, allowing Disney to make the most of the holiday season. The next “Spider-Man”, starring Tom Holland and directed by Jon Watts, shifted up three weeks to July 28, 2017.

The original release date for Star Wars: Episode VIII was to be May 26, 2017 but will now be December 15, 2017.

With prominent release dates now staked out by studios years in advance for their largest franchises, the impact of the switch immediately caused ripples.

The report also claimed that shooting would be delayed a month, but Disney’s press release today said Episode VIII is now in pre-production and will begin principal photography in London next month. “Everyone wanted “Star Wars” stuff for the holidays, Christmas trees were decked out with BB-8 ornaments, and going to the film with your family added an even more emotional element to a film that already carried so much sentimental weight”, Disney said in its statement.

In Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, Johnny Depp returns as Captain Jack Sparrow with Geoffrey Rush back on board as Barbossa, Orlando Bloom resurfacing as Will Turner, and a terrifying new adversary, Captain Salazar, played by Javier Bardem, in the mix.