While The Force Awakens is still showing in theaters, Star Wars: Episode 8 has already begun shooting, Disney CEO Bob Iger said on a quarterly earnings call Wednesday. Iger also offered up praise for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, essentially giving us our first review for the first Star Wars standalone movie, straight from the most biased source possible, of course.
“There is no better way to propel this franchise into the future than producing quality products,” Entertainment Weekly reports Iger as saying . “Filming of Star Wars: Episode 8 , the next chapter of the legendary saga, has just commenced and it will be in theaters December 2017. And production of Episode IX , a 2019 release, has also begun.”
Star Wars: Episode 8 director Rian Johnson previouslyhinted at the opening of production on The Force Awakens sequel, including uploading a photo of Pinewood Studios (where The Force Awakens and Rogue One were also shot) to his Tumblr with the caption “Getting Close…”
But more exciting than the opening of production on Star Wars: Episode 8 is Iger’s description of the Gareth Edwards (Godzilla) directed Rogue One: A Star Wars Story , which looks to combine war and heist movie tropes to tell the story behind the theft of the original Death Star plans.
“Filming of Rogue One is virtually completed and we absolutely love what we’ve seen so far,” Iger said. “This is the first of a set of planned stand-alone stories and we’re already in preproduction on our next one, for release in May of 2018.”
May 2018. https://t.co/9I0ULNksf0
— FilmClickbait (@FilmClickbait) February 10, 2016
Of course it’s not surprising that the Disney CEO would have good things to say about his next Star Wars movie, but the announcement makes clear that Rogue One is beginning to take shape and becoming narratively intact enough to make judgments about its overall qualities as a movie. Hopefully Christopher McQuarrie’s rewrites paid off.
In the hierarchy of interesting things to say about an upcoming Star Wars movie both “we’re actually shooting the thing” and “the CEO says a nice thing about it to investors” is just about the lowest of the low. Is there any piece of Star Wars news less surprising than that?
But hell, Rogue One and Star Wars: Episode 8 both have every opportunity to be even better than Star Wars: The Force Awakens, so we’ll take what crumbs we can get.
