Lucasfilm‘s Star Wars: Episode VIII officially wrapped filming on July 22 after over five months of shooting, yet legendary composer John Williams told a crowd gathered to see him lead the Boston Pops at Tanglewood last night that he will get to screen an early cut in just a few weeks.
Williams said (viaMassLive) that he will begin his scoring duties on the highly-anticipated sequel after screening the film in what is presumed to be a rough assembly form, a job he said he took due to his attachment to Daisy Ridley’s sympathetic portrayal of Rey. The composer of all seven previous saga installments will be one of the privileged few in the world to have seen the film in its entirety, with only a few bits of footage having been shown publicly to toy licensers at Licensing Expo in Las Vegas this past June.
Star Wars: Episode VIII, which is written and directed by Rian Johnson (Looper, Brick) and continues the storylines introduced in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, welcomes back cast members Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Adam Driver, Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Lupita Nyong’o, Oscar Isaac, Domhnall Gleeson, Anthony Daniels, Gwendoline Christie, and Andy Serkis. New cast members will include Academy Award winner Benicio Del Toro, Academy Award nominee Laura Dern, and talented newcomer Kelly Marie Tran.
Produced by Kathleen Kennedy and Ram Bergman and executive produced by J.J. Abrams, Jason McGatlin, and Tom Karnowski, Star Wars: Episode VIII is scheduled for a release on December 15, 2017.
