'Star Wars Episode IX' Has A New Working Title, But Don't Get Too Attached To It

Star Wars movie title announcements are one of those things fans await with baited breath for every film. Even the announcement that the Untitled Han Solo movie would be entitled "Solo: A Star Wars Story" generated excitement among the faithful. But there's nothing like receiving the title for one of the long-awaited final trilogy installments. Both The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi were immediately dissected and analyzed from the moment they were announced. With one more installment still to come, fans need to know: What will Star Wars Episode IX be called?

It's going to be a long wait, so fans of all stripes will have to buckle in and wait. One of the drawbacks of releasing Solo in May, instead of the usual December, was not only putting two Star Wars films within six months of each other but forcing fans to wait a full 18 months* between now and Episode IX. Filming for the final installment hasn't even started yet.

*Originally, Episode IX was supposed to come out in May 2019, so fans would only have one year. But when the director change happened behind the scenes, filming dropped back by four months, and the release date fell back by six.

With filming supposedly starting at the beginning of July, there is finally news on the Episode IX front. J.J. Abrams, who is writing and directing the final episode of the Skywalker saga, originally was functioning under the working title of "Black Diamond." That's a reference to the production company Carbonado Industries, which is helping to produce the film.

But now, the script is done and filming is nigh, the working title of the film has changed. It will now be known as "trIXie."

You see what he did there, right? I'm sure everyone does.

This doesn't actually gives fans clue one what the film will actually be called at the end of the day. Working titles for films rarely do. Usually, they're inside jokes of some sort of cutesy variety, like, well, trIXie. Solo, for instance, was filmed under the title "Star Wars: Red Cup," a reference to a different kind of Solo. The Force Awakens was "Foodles," J.J. Abrams' personal production company. The Last Jedi's was a real oddity: "Space Bear."

If that last one leaves you scratching your head, Rayne Roberts has the explanation, and no, it has nothing to do with porgs:

We were talking about how Luke had retreated and just taken himself out of the world and for some reason [it felt like] Legends of the Fall, when Tristan goes into the woods in the end. But then we were like, ‘And then he gets mauled by a bear.’ And then someone said, ‘So Luke’s like a space bear.'

This is about as insider-joke-baseball as you get. Obviously, "Space Bear" has nothing to do with the real title of the film, The Last Jedi, either.

The name "trIXie," on the other hand, is no inside baseball or a silly in-joke which came from long production discussions. It's a visual pun and a working title with a reference everyone who will be following the film's progress can understand. It's exciting for fans to know the working title has changed though, because it indicates the film's production has progressed to a point where the script has solidified, and now the hard work of actually filming it begins.

Star Wars: trIXie will most likely have the real title revealed once 2019 rolls around. (The Last Jedi's title was revealed in January of 2017.) The movie itself doesn't arrive in theaters until the very end of the year, on Dec. 20, 2019.