Disney and Lucasfilm have officially locked down release dates for the next three installments in the Star Wars franchise. The studio announced today their updated release calendar, which goes all the way through 2027. It's not completely filled out through all of those years, though they do have plans that extend out that far. One of the biggest reveals in their announcement has to do with a galaxy far, far away, as we now know when the franchise will continue on the big screen after the conclusion of the Skywalker saga later this year when Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker arrives on December 20.

The first of these new Star Wars movies is set to arrive on December 16, 2022. It will be the first of three new, currently untitled Star Wars entries that will release on the pre-Christmas weekend every other year. The other two untitled entries in the long-running franchise are set to arrive on December 20, 2024, and December 18, 2026. Now the real question becomes, what exactly are these movies going to be? For the time being, it's difficult to say specifically, but we have some idea of where things are going, based on what has already been announced.

Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss were tapped last year to create their own trilogy of Star Wars movies. They're going to hit the ground running with that once their obligations on HBO's hit fantasy series wraps up. It would be safe to assume at least one or two of these movies will have to do with their trilogy. It was also previously revealed that The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson is going to be working on his own trilogy as well. Could one of these release dates belong to him? Again, it's tough to say. Maybe Lucasfilm is going to do the entire Benioff and Weiss trilogy first, then move onto something else? All we can do is speculate for the time being.

One thing we likely won't be getting is standalone spin-off movies such as Rogue One or Solo. Unfortunately, since Solo didn't work out so well at the box office, Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy decided to steer away from those sorts of titles on the big screen. That means don't expect to hear that one of these movies will be the Boba Fett movie James Mangold was working on.

Stories like that will probably be reserved for the Disney+ streaming service, which will debut the live-action series The Mandalorian later this year. A Rogue One prequel series starring Diego Luna is also in the works for the service. The big takeaway here is that we are indeed going to have a three-year break between installments in the big screen. It seems as though Disney is going to do their best to try and create a strong desire for more Star Wars movies by not giving us one a year, as has been the strategy since they took over. We'll be sure to keep you posted as further developments come to light regarding Disney's future plans for the franchise.