Star Wars Episode VII Release Date Confirmed?

For most of the past few weeks, everyone has been going crazy speculating about who will direct Star Wars and which actors will return. Considering that even the most absurd Star Wars theories are becoming major news, we wondered earlier this month why there had not been much in the way of information on the exact Star Wars Episode VII release date. Traditionally, Lucasfilm has always originally released new Star Wars films in May. In fact if you look at past Star Wars movie release dates, then you could probably make a pretty good case for predicting when Star Wars Episode VII will be released. Both Star Wars and Return of the Jedi were released on May 25, and The Empire Strikes Back was released on May 21. The Phantom Menace and Revenge of the Sith were released on May 19, and Attack of the Clones was released on May 16. Based on the predictability of past Star Wars release dates, then sometime between Wednesday, May 20 and Friday, May 22 of 2015 seem likely as the Star Wars Episode VII release date. However, there is a potential problem with the May release date. The problem is Avengers 2, which Disney has already announced will be released on May 1, 2015. If Avengers 2 is as successful as the first Avengers, then the movie could be raking in the box office dollars through all of May and into June. Would Disney want to risk cutting short their box office potential  with Avengers 2 by releasing a major picture like Star Wars Episode VII, which would gobble up screens that could still be showing Avengers 2. We predicted back in early November that Disney would target Star Wars Episode VII for a July release date to avoid cutting the Avengers 2 box office short. In specific, we think that July 1, 2015 could be a likely release date, given the past success of big budget science fiction films released over July 4th weekend. Now, Total Film is listing July 17, 2015 as the release date of Star Wars Episode VII in the UK. Of course, if this UK release date is accurate, Star Wars Episode VII could always be released earlier or even later in the United States. While Total Film doesn't list a source as to where they got this release date, we did some research and this date has been rumored on various message boards. At one point, it even appeared as the release date on IMDB, which might be Total Film's source. A July release date would certainly make sense for the very reason we pointed out of not wanting to sabotage the potential of the Avengers 2 box office in May and June.