We’ve heard a lot of rumors since Star Wars: Episode VII was announced, most of them involving which characters will be featured and which actors from other Star Wars movies may be reprising their roles.

But now comes the first official announcement of one character you will in fact be seeing in the movie. It’s being reported that R2-D2, the little astromech droid that could, will definitely be showing up somewhere in Episode VII. Even cooler, he’ll be made by fans.

Walt Disney and Lucasfilm have been determined to get the first of many planned upcoming Star Wars movies out by 2015. At first we assumed it would be part of the unbelievably busy summer ’15 movie season, but now it looks like the plan is to avoid that mess.

According to StarWars.com, Star Wars: Episode VII has been locked in for a December 18, 2015 release date. A very merry Christmas present for geeks the world wide in just a couple of years time (is it still that far off?).

Continue reading for the full announcement.

With Star Trek reboot director J.J. Abrams jumping over to the other side to take on Star Wars: Episode VII, obviously he was not going to have the time to make Star Trek 3 for Paramount.

But who will replace Abrams? That’s a question that still exists, but according to a report, Paramount is looking at Attack the Block director Joe Cornish for the job.

In a bit of an interesting twist, it’s being reported that Oscar-winning Toy Story 3 and Little Miss Sunshine screenwriter Michael Arndt is no longer working on the script for Star Wars: Episode VII.

Instead the movie is now being written by J.J. Abrams, who is also directing, and Lawrence Kasdan, who previously worked on the scripts for The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and who was brought in as a consultant and to possibly write other planned installments in the franchise not long after Arndt was initially hired.

Continue below to read the full announcement, include a rundown of who’s working on the movie so far and their previous credits.

This week, Steve Ballmer says goodbye, and investors want Bill Gates out next, Valve makes a new gamepad, Apple‘s the number one brand worldwide, the NSA follows you on Facebook (whether you want it to or not), the internet’s black market is raided, and four rules to make Star Wars great again.