Now’s your chance to relive the beginning of the Star Wars saga. Disney just announced it is rereleasing Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope in theaters in 2027 in honor of the film’s 50th anniversary.
The iconic film will debut in theaters for the anniversary run on April 30, 2027. The announcement was made on the official Star Wars social media. “Star Wars: A New Hope returns to theaters April 2027 to celebrate 50 years of a galaxy far, far away,” the brand wrote alongside a 50th anniversary image.
In a press release linked in the post, the studios also noted that the movie would be back in theatres to celebrate 'May the 4th,' the Star Wars-centric holiday celebrated on May 4 known simply as Star Wars Day.
It was pretty well known that Disney and Lucasfilm planned on bringing the film back to theatres but this announcement makes it official. The press release also notes, though, that the movie will only be available in theatres for a limited time, so it remains to be seen how long the run will be.
A New Hope premiered in 1977 and changed the face of sci-fi and fantasy filmmaking forever. The film — which stars Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, and Mark Hamill — was most recently screened at the British Film Institute in a landmark event that allowed fans to watch its first ever print.
The print was preserved so perfectly (at 23 degrees Fahrenheit, mind you) that the BFI claimed to “present the film exactly as experienced by audiences on its original 1977 release” when they screened it back in June.
Disney did not say which cut of A New Hope it will release. Tickets will be on sale for the 50th anniversary run, we imagine, sometime in late 2026 or early 2027.
Photo by Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty Images.
Lex Briscuso is a film and television critic and a freelance entertainment writer for IGN. You can follow her on Twitter at @nikonamerica.
