You might scoff and laugh and think this is old news - but we take verification and confirmation very seriously.
On Tuesday, it was announced by Minister Heather Humphries that she had given permission for Lucasfilm to film on the ancient monastery of Skellig Michael, which was used last year by JJ Abrams to shoot scenes for The Force Awakens. However, none of the official statements or press releases indicated exactly which film it was.
Was it Episode VIII or was it reshoots for The Force Awakens? We knew that JJ Abrams had sneakily organised reshoots during San Diego Comic-Con, so the idea of doing reshoots three months before the official release date of The Force Awakens wasn't out the realms of possibility. Not only that, we knew that the Skellig Michael shoot was only going to be three or four days at the very most. Plenty of time, we speculated, that a scene for The Force Awakens could be reshot.
Do you think we could get confirmation on this from official sources? HAH. HA HA HA. HAH.
We called Minister Heather Humpries' press advisor, who confirmed that the permission had been granted and the duration of the shoot. When we asked her if it was going to be Episode VIII or The Force Awakens, we got the silent treatment. "These film are wrapped up in a lot of secrecy, as you can imagine." She then kindly pointed us in the direction of The Irish Film Board, whom we put in a call and e-mail to.
As you'd expect, we got the same reply - contact Lucasfilm about it because it's all very hush-hush. By this stage, many outlets were running with the story that Episode VII was shooting on Skellig Michael - even though it wasn't confirmed anywhere.
Dejected by the runaround treatment, we parked the story and let it be. If we couldn't confirm it was one way or the other, then there was no point in running with the story.
Entertainment Weekly, from across the pond, ran the story the next day that it was reshoots for The Force Awakens - not Episode VIII. Lucasfilm then corrected EW's story and confirmed that it was, in fact, shooting for Episode VIII.
And so, now, finally, at long last, we can confirm that Episode VIII is shooting in Ireland in the next week or two.
YOU'RE WELCOME, INTERNET.
