Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. Hot on the heels of Fox announcing its plans for Avatar to take over all Christmases starting in 2020 comes Disney dropping their big (non-Marvel) franchise slate for the coming years. The big surprise is that Colin Trevorrow's Star Wars Episode IX will be released May of 2019 instead of December.
Episode 9 will officially bow May 24, 2019. Traditionally May has been the Star Wars release season, but when JJ Abrams' The Force Awakens was pushed to December of 2015 and then made all the money I would have sworn Disney would have claimed all holiday seasons from here on out. That changed when the Young Han Solo spin-off moved to May 2018, but now that the Saga films are following suit it looks like Disney's reclaiming the start of summer for Star Wars.
Also announced was a slight push on Indiana Jones 5, which will now hit screens July 10, 2020 instead of July 2019. I desperately want to see this movie, especially since I think it's the last chance we'll see Harrison Ford, Steven Spielberg and John Williams collaborate together. I also think Spielberg learned from his mistakes last time around and can take the franchise out on a high note.
Parents will be delighted/horrified to hear that Frozen 2 is definitely coming, expected to hit theaters November 27, 2019. Jon Favreau's The Lion King will hit July 19, 2019 and the long-in-the-works animated venture Gigantic has been pushed even further back to November 25th, 2020.
If Disney wanted to be a dick about it I'm sure they could have challenged Avatar's Christmas claim (and probably won that fight), but they originally intended to stick to the May release date platform and it just feels right to have Star Wars back home, doesn't it?
Cheers to "RabbitTooth" for the sweet Indy/SW mashup image used above!
-Eric Vespe
”Quint”
quint@aintitcool.com
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