Lucasfilms and Disney have today firmed up some more details on their forth coming Star Wars films.

The first spin off film, directed by Gareth Edwards is called Rogue One and will be released worldwide on December 16th 2016.

Star Wars Episode VIII will be released May 26th 2017, not long after the previous Star Wars film.

Here is the full press release courtesy of starwars.com

ROGUE ONE IS THE FIRST STAR WARS STAND-ALONE FILM, RIAN JOHNSON TO WRITE AND DIRECT STAR WARS: EPISODE VIII THE TITLE FOR DIRECTOR GARETH EDWARDS' STAND-ALONE MOVIE, FEATURING ACTRESS FELICITY JONES, IS REVEALED, AND RIAN JOHNSON IS CONFIRMED FOR STAR WARS: EPISODE VIII -- COMING TO theatres MAY 26, 2017.

"Always in motion is the future," Yoda said. The future of the Star Wars cinematic galaxy, however, is taking shape.

This morning at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco, across the street from Lucasfilm, Disney chairman and CEO Bob Iger hosted a shareholder meeting where he announced news regarding the first Star Wars stand-alone movie as well as Star Wars: Episode VIII.

Rogue One is the title for the first film in a unique series of big-screen adventures that explores the characters and events beyond the core Star Wars saga. Rogue One will be directed by Gareth Edwards (Monsters, Godzilla) and written by Oscar nominee Chris Weitz (Cinderella, About a Boy, Antz). The first actress cast is Felicity Jones, who garnered an Academy Award nomination and critical acclaim for her performance in The Theory of Everything. The idea for the story of Rogue One came from John Knoll, an Academy Award-winning visual effects supervisor and chief creative officer at Industrial Light & Magic. He will executive produce along with Simon Emanuel (The Dark Knight Rises, Fast & Furious 6) and Jason McGatlin (Tintin, War of the Worlds). Kathleen Kennedy and Tony To (Band of Brothers, The Pacific) are on board to produce and John Swartz (Star Wars: The Force Awakens) will co-produce. The film starts shooting this summer in London and is due for release on December 16, 2016.

In addition, Iger confirmed that Rian Johnson will write and direct Star Wars: Episode VIII. The film, which continues the saga after the events of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, is set for release on May 26, 2017 - forty years and a day after the release of Star Wars: A New Hope in 1977. Johnson is widely considered one of cinema's most gifted young filmmakers, having directed the modern sci-fi classic, Looper, as well as Brick and The Brothers Bloom. He was also behind the camera for three episodes of the critically-acclaimed TV series Breaking Bad, including "Ozymandias," which series creator Vince Gilligan named as the best instalment of the show. Kathleen Kennedy and Ram Bergman, producer of Looper, Don Jon, Brick, and The Brothers Bloom, are on board to produce.

At the US box office this week there was a big battle for the top spot for which new movie Nightcrawler was just beating Ouija in early released figures.

Jake Gyllenhaal stars in the film about an independent reporter crawling the street looking for a story, the film had taken just over $10 million according to early figures which just placed it on top.

Falling to number 2 is Ouija, which is only $9,000 behind the top spot figure, but once full figures are in it could all change.

On the whole it was an incredibly weak weekend at the US box office caused by Halloween being on a weekend night and sporting events.

Although retail sales on the street are looking pretty glum at the moment with retailers closing their doors by the week it's nice to see a report that sales of Blu-ray movies are up, by an incredible 400%.

The British Video Association have reveled (in a chat with pocket-lint.co.uk) that 1.5 million disk were sold in December. This is great news for Sony, the format and entertainment sales, but lets look try to examine why such a huge jump.

Blu-ray is a new(ish) home movie format, one which had a vicious and fairly long battle with Toshiba's now defunct HD DVD to be the successor to DVD in the home, so 2008 was the first Christmas that consumers had only one high-definition format to choose from, a relief for many I'm sure. Couple this with the fact that the price of the players are coming down to that which consumers beyond the film fanatic are willing to pay and the number of Blu-ray players in the home starts to increase.

HD TVs are also dropping in price and you can currently pick up a decent 1080p TV for well under £1000 if that's too much a decent "HD Ready" can be bought for as little as £300, this together with good sales of the PlayStation 3 which can play Blu-ray movies means that the high definition world is hitting more and more homes, probably by the week.

Now what was the best selling disk on Blu-ray in December, well no surprise to hear it was The Dark Knight (selling nearly 300,000) which was not only one of the more anticipated moves of the year but also one which many people would have wanted on the high-def format, summer action/sci-fi films are what will sell the format.

With all this in mind it's no wonder that sales of the Blu-ray disks are increasing at such a fantastic rate. Don't get me wrong I love Blu-ray and have the full high-def set-up and have enjoyed many films (WALL-E and The Dark Knight are particularly good) on the format, and I hope this surge in sales continues and eventually overtakes DVD, roll on Quantum of Solace it'll be great I'm sure, but it's not really a surprise is it?

There is a bit of controversy circulating around the internet that early adopters of blu-ray disks will lack features of future Blu-ray disks, and although this is true some claims are being made that the early players will not play future disks.

Although the former statement is true, feature on some future disks will not be accessible on certain players, the latter is simply not true.

Lets put this into context, Blu-ray players have a profile, 1.0, 1.1 and in the near future 2.0. Features are categorised in these profiles so for example picture in picture on future disks are part of profile 1.1. If you have an early player that is only capable of 1.0 you will be able to play a 1.1 disk and get the full experience but you wont be able to access the picture in picture feature.

What impact does this have on the current blu-ray player owners? It seems for a majority it will have little impact. One of the reasons why early players are not future proof is that they cannot connect to the internet and so cant be upgraded, this is where the most popular Blu-ray player sold to date has the advantage.

By quite a large margin the best selling player with the largest install base is the Playstation 3 and this is a wireless device which connects to the internet no problem and has already been upgraded to profile 1.1 and the upgrade to 2.0 is just around the corner.

Good news in all this is that one of the standards being introduced for profile 2.0 is the ability to connect to the internet which means that any future upgrades wont be a problem.

If you have been a little bit of an early adopter and you bought a player after November last year then you are probably already set and any player bought then or after that date had to be at least profile 1.1. If you bought one before then just remember you can still watch the film without any loss of picture.

Early adopter generally know that by being the first person on the street to have the latest technology they will probably have an out dated device quicker than the guy next door who waited 2 years before taking the plunge.