When Lucasfilm President Kathy Kennedy announced the new slate of Star Wars movies at Celebration London, there was plenty of excitement and plot descriptions and directors (and even a cast member), but there was no mention of release dates.
That’s probably because it’s a little too early to lock in the time frame, but a recent report from The Hollywood Reporter‘s Borys Kit gives some clues as to what the company might be thinking. He wrote:
But there is still a December 2025 date kept open for an unspecified Star Wars movie, which in theory could be one of these titles. A source tells The Hollywood Reporter that Lucasfilm would ideally like to return to theaters with the Rey-focused film and follow that a year later with the Filoni movie, although nothing is set due to the timetables of the Disney+ Mandalorian universe shows.
To be honest, that’s not at all surprising. The next theatrical film will be a very important one for Star Wars, returning to the big screen for the first time since 2019 and marking the beginning of new eras of exploration beyond the episodic Skywalker Saga. So what better way to do that than with the film most strongly connected to the saga? Daisy Ridley’s Rey Skywalker was the star of the final three episodic films, so this movie is a way of connecting audiences to the Skywalker stories while branching off into some new eras.
Plus, the movie sounds to be the furthest along in production, as Kennedy said in other interviews that they’ve been working on it for a few years already and a script is nearly finished. Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy is attached as director, while Steven Knight is writing it, and Ridley is already cast in the starring role as Rey seeks to rebuild the Jedi Order.
There’s a currently-scheduled Star Wars release date of December 19, 2025, and it sounds like things will be moving full speed ahead to have this Rey film released then. What’s most interesting about the report from THR, though, is that Lucasfilm wants to release Dave Filoni’s movie, tying together the threads from the Mandoverse, a year later. After the 2025 slot, the next currently-scheduled Star Wars film is December 17, 2027, and that’s because the Star Wars franchise and Avatar franchise are scheduled to alternate December releases. So Avatar 4 is slated for 2026, and it’s extremely unlikely that Disney would want to have both a Star Wars movie and Avatar movie going at the same time, which both represent two of the biggest audience draws in Hollywood.
So we’ll have to see how the release dates play out, as a lot can (and likely will) change between now and then. But it’s really exciting to have some more concrete details about the movies that will be coming, and I can’t wait to see them.
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