Rian Johnson's STAR WARS: EPISODE VIII Begins Filming This Month in Ireland

This morning, EW wrote an article about how J.J. Abrams' Star Wars: The Force Awakens would be heading back to Ireland for some last minute reshoots. Since most huge potential blockbuster movies incorporate reshoots into their shooting schedules, this didn't strike me as particularly newsworthy, so I didn't write about it here.

But Lucasfilm has come out stating that EW's original article was factually inaccurate: it's not The Force Awakens that's filming this month in Ireland, it's actually Rian Johnson's Star Wars: Episode VIII that will be getting underway there. That's cool news, since we aren't even sure who is going to be in that movie yet and since Benicio Del Toro (who is likely going to play the villain) recently said it starts filming in March of next year, so this is much earlier. But who will be shooting there? There's a good chance John Boyega's Finn and Daisy Ridley's Rey make it through Awakens alive, but beyond that? We're really not sure. The whole film is shrouded in secrecy so far, and I'm totally cool with that.

We do know that they're going to be filming in the same Ireland location that will be seen in Awakens, a "sharp cluster of rocks rising 715 feet out of the sea" near the ruins of an old monastery, which could be where Luke Skywalker is holed up or perhaps the lair of one of the movie's villains. I'm sure there's some spoilery information online somewhere that will tell you exactly which characters are going to be seen on that set, but I'd rather go into the movie relatively fresh and see it there for myself for the first time.

Episode VIII arrives in theaters on May 26th, 2017, a little more than five months after Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.