No more 40th anniversary release, the movie is delayed until Christmas 2017 and is getting a few rewrites into its script. They already started shooting some scenes last year.
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Today, Disney and Lucasfilm announced that Star Wars: Episode VIII, originally scheduled for release in summer 2017, will now debut on December 15, 2017.
The move follows the extraordinary success of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which was the first Star Wars movie to premiere outside the traditional summer blockbuster window and smashed numerous records, including biggest domestic and global debuts of all time as well as the biggest domestic second and third weekends, en route to becoming the highest grossing domestic release of all time with over $861.3 million and the third biggest global release ever with $1,886.7 billion.
Written and directed by Rian Johnson, Star Wars: Episode VIII is currently in preproduction and will begin principal photography in London next month. Kathleen Kennedy and Ram Bergman will produce and J.J. Abrams, Jason McGatlin, and Tom Karnowski will executive produce. Stay tuned for exciting updates in the coming weeks.
UPDATE: The reason the movie is getting rewritten is allegedly because the main protagonists from Episode VII we kind of pushed aside by the new cast and the audience response to TFA made them change that.
The reason the shooting has been postponed and the movie is getting a rewrite is allegedly because there are too many female characters on the lead, both from the past movies and newly introduced ones. They are working on balancing the cast.
EDIT: Wrong information. It's getting rewritten because the movie focused less on Rey/Ren/Finn and the audience response to those characters was so good that they are making them more important to the plot.
