Star Wars: Episode VIII Has a New Release Date

The release date for Star Wars: Episode VIII has been pushed from its original release date of May 26, 2017 to Dec. 15, 2017.

The news comes after reports that writer/director Rian Johnson is supposedly expanding the roles of the main characters from The Force Awakens following the film's success. “I said before there were two [new] young female roles, now I actually heard that the rewrite will make these roles smaller. They want to get to know better the characters they already have. So the new rewrite is shrinking the new roles in order to spend more time with Rey, Poe and so on” Jeff Sneider said on video podcast.
 
The film will pick up from the events in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which has now become the biggest movie in North America, with $861 million in grosses. Rogue One, the first film in the stand-alone Star Wars Anthology series, will be the next release from the Star Wars universe. Felicity Jones, Diego Luna and Forest Whitaker are set to star in the spin-off, which will hit theaters December 16, 2016.