Earlier this year, Disney tried to convince everyone that Star Wars: Episode IX would be released in May of 2019, even though The Force Awakens, Rogue One, and the upcoming The Last Jedi have all had December premieres. Now, with Episode IX back on track after Lucasflm brought J.J. Abrams back into the fold, Disney has apparently decided that it might as well move this Star Wars movie back to the month when all of its other Star Wars movies have come out, so The Last Jedi has been bumped back a few months from May 24 to December 20, 2019.
This comes from Variety, which points out that Episode IX is swapping release dates with the live-action Aladdin, which was set for December but is now moving up to May. The Variety story also suggests that this was a recent decision, and that it was based on Disney and Lucasfilm wanting to push production back a little bit (possibly to give Abrams more time to reacquaint himself with the plot threads he introduced in The Force Awakens). Of course, that’s assuming that releasing the movie in December wasn’t just the plan all along, which it probably was.