Not a lot of news around the Galaxy these days, but what it lacks in quantity, it certainly makes up for in quality.
Recapping the news from Thursday, Star Wars Episode VIII has a release date. Bob Iger announced this week at the annual shareholders meeting that the movie come out on May 26, 2017. He also confirmed that the writer and director will be Rian Johnson. Interestingly, only 3 weeks after Disney’s other high dollar, sci-fi sequel, Guardians of the Galaxy 2, which releases on May 5. Putting those two so close together is an interesting move. Marvel has already moved most of their phase 3 movies because of Spider-Man, I wonder if they’ll do it again for Star Wars.
We also learned a lot about the first Star Wars spinoff movie. The title is Rogue One and it will be released on December 16, 2016. It will be written by Chris Weitz, directed by Gareth Edwards and starring Felicity Jones. Shooting begins this summer in London.
In case you are still laminating the loss of the Star Wars Expanded Universe and have already read The New Dawn, Tarkin and the Marvel comics, you are in luck. Disney has just announced that more than 20 new books will be released this year in preparation for Episode VII’s release at the end of the year. Up to this point, the “New EU” has consisted of stories that bridge Episode III and Episode IV (the above mentioned novels and the Star Wars Rebels cartoon) or take place after Episode IV (the above mentioned comics). But this year, everything is about setting the stage for the new movie.
Andrew Sugerman, executive vice president of Disney Publishing Worldwide said, “The Force Awakens is an extraordinarily, heavily guarded storyline. To track it, a lot of top-secret meetings were happening up in San Francisco as we worked through this program. The partnership with the story group and the editorial team always had to be true to the sanctity of the film while making sure that we find these moments to introduce hints, clues, and puzzle pieces. Without revealing what those pieces are, it will just allow readers to speculate about the new film: What could a location mean, or what could a character mean?”
Already announced are Star Wars: Aftermath from Del Rey publishing, Star Wars: Journey to the Force Awakens from Marvel (which will hopefully be better than their MCU tie-in comics) and a story told from the perspective of C-3PO. We will also see novels retelling the original trilogy from the perspective of other characters. We’ll also follow the adventures of Leia in Moving Target by Cecil Castellucci, Luke in The Weapon of a Jedi by Jason Fry and Han Solo in Smuggler’s Run by Greg Rucka.
What are you most excited about?