The date a movie is released, for your big tentpole franchises, is almost more important than if that movie is any good. For the past two Christmases, Lucasfilm and Disney have cemented the holiday season as a time for Star Wars, with Rogue One making over $1 billion on its December 2016 release, and–oh yeah–over $2 billion for The Force Awakens the year before. And try as they might to shift to May releases, it seems like December is when we’ll visit a galaxy far, far away, at least in the main saga, with the announcement coming on Tuesday that Episode IX is moving to December 2019.
Star Wars: Episode IX is scheduled for release on December 20, 2019. pic.twitter.com/rDBqmuHX89
— Star Wars (@starwars) September 12, 2017
It’s not the world’s biggest surprise, to be honest; the success of the first two Star Wars movies at Christmas-time has been proof enough of viability outside the crucial (and lengthy) Summer Movie Season. And following last week’s news of Colin Trevorrow stepping down as director and Tuesday’s announcement that J.J. Abrams will be stepping in, with a brand new writer, basically scripting from the ground up, an extra seven months will be necessary.
The Last Jedi is set for release this December, and it will likely clean up, with closest competition for the month being the new Jumanji movie and Pitch Perfect 3. As of this writing, only the shifted-directors Han Solo movie is actually getting the May release it initially had, still scheduled to hit cinemas in May 2018. That means there’ll be about 19 months between Star Wars movies unless Lucasfilm shimmies in another one in the interim.
What do you think about another December Star Wars release? Let us know in the comments below!
Image: Lucasfilm
Kyle Anderson is the Associate Editor for Nerdist. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Twitter!
