The announcement of the title of a new Star Wars movie is always cause for excitement. I vaguely remember the mild skepticism that greeted the 1998 reveal that Episode I would titled The Phantom Menace, while fans were over the moon with the cool-ass sounding Revenge of the Sith. The two Sequel Trilogy movie titles have played things pretty close to their chests though, with The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi both able to be interpreted in a number of different ways.
That’s why I’m so jazzed that it’s looking like Lucasfilm are going to announce the title for Star Wars: Episode IX by the end of the week. The studio has yet to confirm that, of course, but one major clue that something’s headed our way comes via C-3PO actor Anthony Daniels, who tweeted:
“How strange. I am receiving images of something amazing coming towards us – travelling over decades through space and time – reaching out to all humans on this planet with its message. What could it be? Should I be afraid? Should you? Stay tuned.”
On top of that, this week we have Disney’s quarterly earnings call, the return of The Star Wars Show (a fan show on StarWars.com) and it’s expected that shooting on Episode IX will finish in the next few days as well. In addition to that, Disney and Lucasfilm announced the title of The Last Jedi in January of 2017, so if they’re following the same marketing plan, we may be overdue. It’d be foolish to speculate what the title might be, of course, but I can guarantee that whatever it is it’ll launch a million fan theories on how it’ll refer to the plot of the movie.
Once that’s out of the way, we’ll have what’s sure to be an astonishing trailer to look forward to, with many pegging May 4th – Star Wars Day – as the most likely candidate. This makes sense to me, as Disney will be eager not to have Star Wars: Episode IX tread too much on the marketing campaign for Avengers: Endgame, with both films destined to compete for the largest box office haul of 2019. Suffice it to say, it’s an exciting time to be a fan of that galaxy far, far away.