When Will We See The First 'Star Wars: Episode 8' Trailer? Kathleen Kennedy Responds
Our wait is finally over. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story finally opens tonight in the U.S., paying off literally years of rumors, hype, reporting, and marketing. But we Star Wars fans are kind of a greedy bunch, aren't we? We can never get enough. Sure, Rogue One is here at long last — but what about the next Star Wars movie, Episode 8? When will we see the first trailer for that?
Well, if it were up to star Adam Driver, the answer would be "never." But it's not, and Kathleen Kennedy definitely has other plans. The Lucasfilm chief recently fielded a question about when we'd see the first Episode 8 footage. Find out what she had to say below.
BBC News reporter Lizo Mzimba caught up with Kennedy at a recent event and asked when we'd get to see the first Episode 8 trailer. "Well, pretty soon," she responded. "We're giving [Rogue One] a little bit of breathing room, and then probably heading into spring, you'll start to see things."
Directed by Rian Johnson, Episode 8 opens December 15, 2017 – exactly one year from today, following Disney's current pattern of putting out one Star Wars movie each December. So if the first Episode 8 trailer arrives in spring 2017, that's keeping in line with the marketing timeline established by earlier films. The Force Awakens put out one super-early teaser trailer in November 2014, over a year before the film's release, and then another in April 2015, while Rogue One's first teaser hit in April of this year. If we're lucky, maybe the Episode 8 trailer will arrive just a tiny bit earlier with Beauty and the Beast in March.
In addition to that little tidbit about the Episode 8 trailer, Kennedy also offered a brief status update on that Han Solo spinoff. "We're actually very close," she said. "We're going to start shooting in February." That one stars Alden Ehrenreich as Han Solo, Donald Glover as Lando Calrissian, and Emilia Clarke as... someone whose name we apparently aren't allowed to know yet. Phil Lord and Chris Miller are directing, and it'll land in theaters May 25, 2018. Which means we can probably expect to see that trailer around fall 2017 or so.
Watch Kennedy's comments below:
And in the meantime, of course, Rogue One is in theaters tonight. If you need a little extra help getting hyped, here's a quick TV spot that pulls together a bunch of really flattering quotes from the first reviews: