With all of the attention on Star Wars: The Last Jedi this year, The Walt Disney Company and Lucasfilm has managed to drop a little timeline stamp for two huge movies with a release date confirmed for both Star Wars: Episode 9 and the new Indiana Jones movie. However, it’s not all good news for fans as they’ll have a long wait with neither film planned for next year.
Instead, the release date for Star Wars Episode 9 has been set as the 24th May 2019, which is more than two years away, and a hefty 17 months after The Last Jedi lands on the big screen on the 14th December 2017. Admittedly, it’s a shorter break than the two years between Star Wars: The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi, but it’s still a long way off.
Star Wars Episode 9, will be directed by Colin Trevorrow, who’s most recent film credit is the blockbuster return of the dinosaur fun fair in Jurassic World. However, prior to that he hadn’t been in the director’s chair for any other big name releases, although his sci-fi rom-com, Safety Not Guaranteed, picked up the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. It helped to make a name for the Californian director, but his rise to Hollywood prominence is surely guaranteed with the confirmation of his upcoming Star Wars duties.
Disney has taken the decision to post a different director in charge of each of the three new episodes with J.J. Abrams in the hot seat for Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Rian Johnson in the cockpit for The Last Jedi. While The Force Awakens managed to pick up positive critical reception following it’s release in 2015, we’ll have to wait until December 2017 and then again until May 2019 to see if it all works together well.
If that isn’t enough waiting, the new Indiana Jones movie release date has been slated for the 10th July 2020, so we should all be riding around on hover boards and flying cars by the time it hits the big screen. However, returning to the good news side of the equation, Steven Spielberg will be back in the director’s chair for his fifth movie in the series, along with Harrison Ford (Blade Runner 2049) leading the cast as Indiana Jones.
It follows up on the 2008 return to the series for them both in Indiana Jones And The Crystal Skull, which picked up mixed reviews compared to the more universal acclaim that the first three movies got when they came out back in the 1980s. The big for the new movie is that this will be the first film in the series led by Disney following its acquisition of LucasArts back in , so it’s going to be interesting to see whether it can pull off the same success with Indiana Jones as it has done for Star Wars.
