There's A Longer Wait For The Next 'Star Wars' Now

If you've already seen Star Wars: The Force Awakens half a dozen times in theaters, this news is sure to disappoint. Though the follow-up film, Star Wars: Episode VIII, was slated for a May 2017 release, it was just announced that Star Wars: Episode VIII now has a release date of December 15, 2017 instead. Deadline reported that the new film has moved to the later date and that Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales will take over the movie's former Memorial Day weekend slot. Bustle reached out to Disney for comment and have not heard back at the time of publication. Now that the news has been officially confirmed, fans of the space epic are right to be less-than-thrilled by this update. After all, 10 years have passed between final prequel film Revenge Of The Sith and the beginning of the new trilogy The Force Awakens — an additional seven month wait hardly seems fair to Star Wars enthusiasts.

Though we do not have word yet on why the new film got pushed back to December 2017, there are a few reasons why the studio may have seen it better to release it later. The simplest explanation is that there may not have been enough time to put together the massive production, whether it be due to actors' conflicting schedules or intense special effects. Then, there's the possibility that producers thought that the film might do better with a release date in December instead of one in May — though, let's be honest, with a movie as huge as Star Wars: Episode VIII, there's no way it's not going to crush it at the box office.

Alas, the reasons for the long wait doesn't mean all that much when fans already have a year and a half to go before Star Wars: Episode VIII. (They won't, however, have to wait very long for Rogue One, a standalone film set in the Star Wars universe that is set to premiere theatrically in December of 2016.) So how can you cope with the wait?

Let these pictures of Oscar Isaac take your mind off of it:

You're welcome.

Image: Walt Disney Studios