Will the release of Star Wars: Episode VII be delayed?

After Harrison Ford was hurt last week while filming Star Wars: Episode VII, it was thought that his injury would not delay production at all, and that the actor would be back up and filming within a couple of months.

However, that was before the severity of the injury became clear. It was variously reported that Ford had either badly injured his leg, or broken his ankle (in an on set incident rumoured to have involved the door of the Millennium Falcon). It has since been confirmed by Ford’s publicist that he has in fact broken his left leg, which is going to put him out of action for much longer than originally thought.

Jedi News writes that a production meeting was called at Pinewood Studios on June 23rd to discuss the situation, and that according to early reports the release date of Ep. VII could get pushed back by “a substantial amount of time.”

The release date of the film has already been postponed once due to director J J Abrams deciding that some script changes were needed; the film was originally scheduled for release in May 2015, but was pushed back to December 18th 2015. Now it’s looking like we may not get a 2015 release at all.

There has been no comment from Disney, Lucasfilm, or Bad Robot, but we can’t imagine they will be too pleased about pushing the release date back again, as apparently Disney in particular were very keen on a 2015 release. The plan (as it stands, anyway) is to release a new Star Wars movie every year from 2015 onwards, alternating between core movies and spin offs.

We’ve had no official confirmation of any delay as of yet, but unfortunately it does seem pretty likely that a significant shake-up of the production schedule is soon to occur, and a delayed release for Star Wars: Episode VII will almost certainly be a part of that.

We’re wishing our Han Solo a speedy recovery.