NEW YORK (AP) — "Star Wars: Episode VIII" has begun filming and has added Benicio del Toro and Laura Dern to its cast. 
 
 The Walt Disney Co. announced Monday that "Episode VIII" started principal photography at London's Pinewood Studios on Monday. Written and directed by Rian Johnson, the "Star Wars" sequel will follow J.J. Abrams' box-office smash "The Force Awakens." It's set for release in December 2017. 
 
 Joining returning cast members are the Oscar-winning del Toro, the Oscar-nominated Dern and newcomer Kelly Marie Tran. 
 
 The production start announcement was accompanied by a brief video that showed shooting picking up right where "The Force Awakens" left off, with Johnson directing Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker) on a remote island off the coast of Ireland. 

 Published on Feb 15, 2016 
 
 Cameras roll for the next chapter of the Star Wars saga, written and directed by Rian Johnson. 
 
 
 
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 Director Rian Johnson and company started filming Episode VIII today in London, and not only have we already gotten an extremely tiny bit of new footage (all of it containing Luke Skywalker’s amazing Jedi face) we have the official cast list, including a few new names. 
 
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 The movie stars everyone you’d expect from The Force Awakens, plus this “Academy Award winner Benicio Del Toro, Academy Award nominee Laura Dern, and talented newcomer Kelly Marie Tran.” Not, of course, that we know anything about who’ll they are playing, but we can all always wildly speculate based on rumor. 
 
 Del Toro’s name has been attached to this movie for a while now. He’s supposed to be playing a villain. If he’s another First Order bad guy, he’ll be joining returning cast members Adam Driver, Domhnall Gleeson, Gwendoline Christie, and Andy Serkis. He could also be a villain unaligned with the First Order, like a Jabba-esque crime lord or a bounty hunter. 
 
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 We have no idea who Laura Dern and Kelly Marie Tran could be playing, but their casting could mean that the names we’d heard bandied about for a new female lead—Gina Rodriguez (Jane the Virgin), Tatiana Maslany (Orphan Black), Olivia Cooke (Me and Earl and the Dying Girl), and others—were just rumors. 
 
 Here’s the announcement video, featuring the shocking news that the last scene of The Force Awakens will also appear in Episode VIII: 
 
 And the full announcement: 
 
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 Rey took her first steps into a larger world in Star Wars: The Force Awakens and will continue her epic journey with Finn, Poe, and Luke Skywalker in the next chapter of the continuing Star Wars saga, Star Wars: Episode VIII, which began principal photography at Pinewood Studios in London on February 15, 2016. Star Wars: Episode VIII, which is written and directed by Rian Johnson 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, Oscar Isaac, Lupita Nyong’o, 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. Star Wars: Episode VIII is produced by Kathleen Kennedy and Ram Bergman and executive produced by J.J. Abrams, Jason McGatlin, and Tom Karnowski. Joining the production crew will be some of the industry’s top talent, including Steve Yedlin (Director of Photography), Bob Ducsay (Editor), Rick Heinrichs (Production Designer), Peter Swords King (Hair and Make-Up Designer), and Mary Vernieu (US Casting Director). They will be joining returning crew members Pippa Anderson (Co-Producer, VP Post Production), Neal Scanlan (Creature & Droid FX Creative Supervisor), Michael Kaplan (Costume Designer), Jamie Wilkinson (Prop Master), Chris Corbould (SFX Supervisor), Rob Inch (Stunt Coordinator), Ben Morris (VFX Supervisor), and Nina Gold (UK Casting Director). Star Wars: Episode VIII is scheduled for release December 15, 2017. 
 
 [Star Wars.com]
– Star Wars: Episode VIII has begun filming and has added Benicio del Toro and Laura Dern to its cast. The Walt Disney Co. announced that Episode VIII started principal photography on Monday. The third name to join returning cast members is newcomer Kelly Marie Tran, who EW notes has some CollegeHumor shorts and small roles on shows like About a Boy on her resume. iO9 reports it has "no idea" who Dern and Tran could be playing, but points out that del Toro's name has been bandied about for a while; he's expected to slip into a bad-guy role, though no word on whether that means he's a First-Order villain or one of some other stripe. The production start announcement was accompanied by a brief video that showed shooting picking up right where The Force Awakens left off, with Rian Johnson directing Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker) on a remote island off the coast of Ireland. This film is set for release in December 2017, reports the AP.