Disney Delays ‘Avatar’ Sequels Again; Sets New Release Dates for Upcoming ‘Star Wars’ Movies

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The Walt Disney Company is one of the biggest conglomerates in Hollywood, with dozens of movie studios under its umbrella. Disney currently holds full ownership over Lucasfilm’s ‘Star Wars,’ Marvel Studios’ Marvel Cinematic Universe, and all the 20th Century Studios’ franchises, including ‘Alien’ and James Cameron’s ‘Avatar.’

We still remember all the delays caused by the pandemic of COVID-19 back in 2020. Those delays were really a headache for movie studios, cinemas, and movie lovers in general. Three years later, we might have left the pandemic in the past (please, don’t ever come back), but a huge amount of movie delays is still very much a thing, as Disney proved just now.

Many MCU movies have been delayed too. You can read more about that on our sister site Comic Basics.

Two ‘Star Wars’ movies will arrive in 2026!

Despite being one of the most popular franchises in pop culture, we haven’t seen any ‘Star Wars’ on the big screen since the conclusion of the Skywalker saga with ‘Episode IX — The Rise of Skywalker’ in December 2019. Since then, Lucasfilm decided to focus more on TV shows that we have been watching on Disney+, and so far, we have watched three seasons of ‘The Mandalorian,‘ ‘The Book of Boba Fett,’ ‘Obi-Wan Kenobi’ and ‘Andor.’ And that’s just the live-action content we’re talking about.

It’s cool that we’re revisiting the ‘Star Wars’ universe through those TV shows, but let’s face it, we need ‘Star Wars’ back on the big screen, and we will finally get it in 2026. As announced at this year’s Star Wars Celebration Event, three brand-new movies are in development. One movie will follow the first Jedi ever, one will be a culmination of ‘The Mandalorian’ series and its spin-offs, and one will see the return of Daisy Ridley as Rey Skywalker after the events of ‘Episode IX’ as she’s trying to rebuild Jedi order.

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Disney has announced three release dates for those movies, although we still don’t know for which movies each of those days is set. We can expect new ‘Star Wars’ movies in:

  • May 22, 2026
  • December 18, 2026
  • December 17, 2027

Do not expect ‘Avatar 5’ before 2031!

If you’re a fan of James Cameron’s ‘Avatar,’ we’re afraid we don’t have good news for you either. As we all know, the original movie was released in 2009. The sequel was originally set to arrive in 2014, but after countless delays, we finally watched ’Avatar: The Way of Water’ in theaters in December 2022, exactly 13 years after the premiere of the original.

After 13 years of waiting for the first sequel, we all hoped the waiting would be shorter for the three upcoming movies that James Cameron announced. And true, the waiting for them will be shorter than that, but still a lot longer than we anticipated. The next movie, currently untitled ‘Avatar 3,’ was set to arrive in December 2024, but now it will hit theaters one year later. And as for the final two movies, well, just look at the new release schedule below and see for yourself.

  • ‘Avatar 3’ — December 19, 2025
  • ‘Avatar 4’ — December 21, 2029
  • ‘Avatar 5’ — December 19, 2031

There’s no doubt that we’ll get a lot of new blockbuster content from Disney in the coming years and decades as well. But tell me, has it ever happened that you know the exact release date for a movie that is set to arrive in eight years!?

As we wait (and grow old) waiting for new installments of ‘Star Wars’ and ‘Avatar,’ you can watch all the previous installments of these franchises on Disney+

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Lukas Abramovich is a freelance writer and photo and video editor based in Croatia. He's also a web designer and holds a Master’s degree in general Computer Science from the Faculty of Informatics based in Pula, Croatia. Since 2018, Lukas has worked on several portals writing about movies, TV shows, and video games. He's currently writing articles for two of them: Fiction Horizon and Comic Basics. He also has a YouTube channel in his native language, and the content there is mostly reviewing popular movies and TV shows. Lukas also has an Instagram page where he once used to post fan-made posters he made, which is something he would like to continue working on, as photo and video editing are also some of his passions. Lukas is a big movie lover who is okay with watching any kind of movie. His favorite movie is Michael Curtiz's Casablanca, but he's a loyal follower of Marvel and DC movies, as well as several other blockbuster franchises he's been following for years; Star Wars, Fast & Furious, Mission: Impossible, and James Cameron's Avatar are only some of them. His favorite director is Christopher Nolan, with Quentin Tarantino and Denis Villeneuve as honorable mentions. Lukas is also a big fan of four fantasy multimedia franchises; The Wizarding World, A Song of Ice and Fire, The Witcher, and The Lord of the Rings. He calls them "the four rulers of the fantasy genre." He loves to write about anything spawned from those franchises (books, games, movies...), as well as anything branded with the Marvel or DC logo. Video games and their adaptations are also something he follows faithfully since he's a big fan of story-driven single-player games like Assassin's Creed, The Last of Us, Uncharted, etc. His favorite video game ever is Red Dead Redemption 2.