Release date shuffle puts Star Wars: Episode VIII back 7 months, Spider-Man up 3 weeks

By Katie Rife | January 20, 2016 | 9:03pm

Aux Features Film

In a move that would have us furiously typing out something about a million voices crying out in terror, were that not a totally played out joke we’ve made a million times before, Deadline reports that the release date for Star Wars: Episode VIII has been moved back seven months, from May 26, 2017 to December 15, 2017. The purported reason for the delay is script rewrites, which i09 claims will shrink the roles of some new characters we haven’t seen yet in order to focus more on the internet’s new BFFs Rey, Finn, and Poe Dameron.

And because the box office abhors a vacuum (in the summertime, anyway), to fill the now-vacant Memorial Day tentpole slot, Disney is moving up the release date of its fifth Pirates Of The Caribbean movie, Dead Men Tell No Tales, from July 7, 2017 to May 26, 2017. Perhaps Spidey-sensing an opportunity (sorry, but it was right there), Sony has responded by moving up its newest Spider-Man reboot to July 7, three weeks earlier than its originally scheduled release date. And the Jumanji remake is being pushed back into that slot, from Christmas 2016 to July 28, 2017, where it won’t have to go up against Star Wars spinoff Rogue One.