The final film in the new Star Wars trilogy, Star Wars: Episode IX, will be released in May 2019, movie studio Walt Disney says.

The May 24 release date marked a shift in strategy for Disney, whose two previous new entries in the sci-fi adventure franchise have all been set mid-December, during the US winter holidays.

Disney revealed no details of the plot for Star Wars: Episode IX, about which little is known except that it will be directed by Colin Trevorrow of Jurassic World fame.

Episode IX completes the trilogy that began after Disney bought George Lucas’s Lucasfilm in a $US4 billion ($A5.3 billion) deal in 2012.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which reunited the original cast of the first 1977 film, was released in December 2015, and Star Wars: The Last Jedi is due to open worldwide on December 15, 2017.

Disney on Wednesday also announced that another of its blockbuster franchise revivals, a new Indiana Jones movie starring Harrison Ford, had been pushed back by a year to July 2020.

The studio gave no explanation for the change in the release date for the as-yet untitled film that had been originally scheduled for July 2019.