Disney Delay 'Star Wars: Episode 9' Release By Seven Months

As a poet once said: Toldja. Just this morning, news arrived that “Star Wars: Episode IX” now has a director, with J.J. Abrams being persuaded, by what is presumably an amount of money equivalent to the GDP of a Baltic state, to return to the director’s chair recently vacated by Colin Trevorrow. And, towards the end of the piece, we wrote: “We’ll see if Abrams can be the first director to make two good ‘Star Wars’ movies when ‘Episode IX’ opens, if it doesn’t get delayed (spoiler: it DEFINITELY will), on May 24th, 2019.”

Frankly, we weren’t expecting it to happen so quickly, but lo, Disney have revealed that they’ve pushed back the release date of the movie by seven months, with it now being set to open on December 20th, 2019. And, as we said, this was always in the cards. The ‘Han Solo’ movie, which is still hanging on to its May 2018 date for now, was at least most of the way through production when Ron Howard was brought on to replace Lord and Miller, so the idea that its date could still hold was somewhat feasible (though we suspect it’ll still slip, in part because it’ll now be the only non-Christmas ‘Star Wars’ release date).

READ MORE: Report: Kathleen Kennedy Won’t Put Up With Your ‘Star Wars’ Bullsh*t

But Abrams and co-writer Chris Terrio appear to be starting more or less from scratch and, understandably, with the movie originally being due to open barely 18 months from now, would like a little more time to work on their script before filming begins. Indeed, there’s an element of history repeating itself here — the December release date was something that Abrams seemingly insisted on when he took the ‘Force Awakens‘ job, so as not to be rushed.

Bad news for any producers trying to schedule John Boyega or Daisy Ridley to shoot towards the end of next year, then, but also bad news for Sony and Universal, who were planning to open “Masters Of The Universe” and “Wicked,” respectively (the latter ironically being directed by future “Star Wars” helmer Stephen Daldry) the same week now being reclaimed by ‘Star Wars.’ One of Disney’s untitled live-action fairy tale movies — presumably “Aladdin,” “Mulan” or something as yet unrevealed — was previously set for that date, but “Aladdin” has now taken the old ‘Star Wars’ slot, and will open on May 24th, 2019.

Perhaps more interesting are the implications for “Wonder Woman 2,” the sequel to the biggest movie of 2017 to date, which is currently set to open the week before, on December 13th. Will WB be confident that the sequel to their beloved hit can stand up to the ‘Star Wars’ juggernaut? Or will they blink? Find out in the weeks and months to come.