Star Wars Episode VIII; First Spin-Off Details.

There’s huge news for fans of Star Wars and the extended universe as starwars.com released a statement today, 12th March 2015, revealing that Looper (2012) writer and director Rian Johnson will be writing and directing the next film in the central Star Wars canon, Star Wars Episode VIII, and that the film now has its official release date, May 26th 2017.

This will be exactly forty years and one day since the release of George Lucas’s genre-shifting, culture-defining work, Star Wars: A New Hope, which entered theatres in the United States in 1977.

The new Lucasfilm Star Wars project will follow on directly from Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which is released on the 19th of December this year (2015), is set to feature the returns of big names such as Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher, and is due to be directed by Mission: Impossible III director J.J. Abrams.

Star Wars Episode VIII will be a third collaboration between Rian Johnson and producers Kathleen Kennedy and Ram Bergman, as the trio teamed up for Looper and The Brothers Bloom in 2012 and 2008 respectively.

Image courtesy of starwars.com

It was also announced that Lucasfilm and Disney would be releasing the first standalone Star Wars movie, which will be titled ‘Rogue One’. This will be the first film in a series of unique big-screen adventures that explores the characters and events beyond the core Star Wars saga (otherwise known as the Skywalker Saga). Welsh-born Godzilla (2014) and Monsters (2010) director Gareth Edwards has been chosen as the man to helm the upcoming film, while 2015 academy award nominee Felicity Jones has been slated to star in the movie’s yet-to-be-confirmed lead role. Rogue One is currently scheduled to be written by Chris Weitz, the screenwriter behind About A Boy, Antz, and Cinderella.

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