If you thought Luke Skywalker’s victory over the empire was the most thrilling tale of against-the-odds rebellion in the universe, then you haven’t been paying attention to the cinema listings for the weekend of 15 December. That’s when The Last Jedi, AKA Star Wars: Episode VIII, opens at UK cinemas, along with eight films you’ve probably never heard of. “When you’ve got a behemoth like that, a lot of films will run terrified,” says Andreas Wiseman, deputy editor of Screen International. “They did when The Force Awakens came out in 2015. But it’s interesting to see that this time they’re not quite as terrified.”

Indeed, a long time ago (in a galaxy far, far away etc), a film like the Chinese coming-of-age drama Youth or the meditative, Willem Dafoe-narrated documentary Mountain (both out on 15 December) would have been more or less assured a small but bankable audience on screens booked in the UK’s arthouse cinemas. “We never show the Star Wars or the Bond films because that’s not really what we’re about,” says Allison Gardner, programme director at Glasgow Film Theatre. “It’s nothing to do with whether I think these films are quality or not, but they’re on everywhere. Our job is to give people a wider choice.” They will instead be showing Song of Granite, an Irish folk-singer biopic, and Prince of Nothingwood, a documentary about Afghanistan’s most prolific film actor-producer, the swashbuckling Salim Shaheen. And they’ll have their annual festive classic screenings with mulled wine, mince pies and hankies: “We take probably as much on It’s a Wonderful Life as some of the smaller commercial cinemas do on Star Wars.”

Cinemas willing to take such a stand are increasingly rare, however, with Curzon, Picturehouse and several other independent chains all choosing to include Star Wars films in their programmes, often to the exclusion of less bankable arthouse or foreign-language options. So why on earth would any independent film distributor choose to go up against The Last Jedi?

“I do work in mysterious ways,” confesses Martin Myers, the founder of Miracle Communications, the distribution company responsible for releasing two of the non-Star Wars films out on the weekend in question. One is Bingo: The King of the Mornings, a Brazilian biographical drama about an 80s TV clown, which, Myers says, he opted to release in December, “purely for Bafta qualification if I’m absolutely frank with you because you have to have 10 cinemas play [it] before February”. The other is the low-budget, British psychological thriller The Unseen, released opposite The Last Jedi because “we just felt that it was [good] counter-programming”.

Counter-programming? When contemplating those rammed mid-December schedules, you would be forgiven for assuming that offering audiences an alternative was a lost art in cinema. In fact, there are still some expert practitioners, including Myers, who learned the basics at his late father’s knee. Back in 1976, Myers Sr did such a good job drumming up audiences for the European release of Assault on Precinct 13 that its director, John Carpenter, was moved to name his infamous Halloween character Mike Myers in tribute.

“You have to look at the calendar and see what else is out there,” says Myers Jr. It’s common sense to release children’s films during the school holidays, for instance: “The only thing with Whit Sunday half-term is that you can never guarantee if you’re going to get hot weather. Then, obviously, you struggle.” A big sporting event remains a good time to release a romcom (our modern, gender-neutral sensibilities notwithstanding). Although if England reaches the semi-final stage of the World Cup next year it’s another distributor’s headache: “Then, everyone wants to watch the football.”

Getting the date right is a crucial component of any film’s release strategy, but perhaps less so for a film like The Last Jedi, which has been shuffled from an initial 26 March 2017 release slot, to its present one. “Huge movies tend to have extra work go into them late in their process,” suggests Wiseman. “I think maybe off the back of The Force Awakens’ huge $2bn take they thought: ‘Well, look, give [Last Jedi director] Rian [Johnson] a bit more time to do his thing and we’re going to do super-well at Christmas, anyway.’ At the end of the day, Star Wars is always king.”

The regal bearing of a new Star Wars, combined with the fact that the franchise appeals across demographics, presents a particular problem for aspiring counter-programmers. But Fox – the only other big studio to step into the fray – has spotted an opening for Ferdinand, its U-certificate animation about a gentle bull who would rather smell flowers than fight matadors. “On paper, while it might not be Ice Age, it still could do very well,” says Wiseman. “They’ll look to be the real kids’ movie over Christmas, whereas Star Wars might be doing [children who are] a little older.”

In the US, in fact, Ferdinand is one of only two films out on The Last Jedi weekend. The other, Permanent, is an 80s-set indie comedy about a misfit family starring the US Office’s Rainn Wilson and Patricia Arquette. So, thematically fitting, at least. Could this underdog drama appeal to an underdog crowd? Wiseman isn’t convinced: “I don’t know if that is a strategy they’re employing, but, if it is, I think it’s just a total gamble. Star Wars does appeal to so many different groups; it’s one of the real juggernauts. There aren’t many chinks in its armour. Could Permanent be a breakout? It’s possible, but if it is a breakout, I imagine it’s going to be a very contained breakout.”

Most of the films going up against The Last Jedi will be adopting a more tried-and-tested release strategy, one that prioritises making play for press coverage over box office takings. “We thought we were being quite clever, to be honest,” says Gary Sinyor, director of The Unseen. “Obviously, the other big films avoid Star Wars like the plague, but we’re not a big film. Our thinking was that, normally, we might get lost, but if we’re the only other fiction film out that week then the papers should, hopefully, give us more space. And, since the reviews are good, that’s a positive.”

In the event, however, The Last Jedi’s tractor beam has been difficult to escape: “We were told, particularly, I think, by Vue and Odeon, that there was no room at the inn. Which is quite appropriate for Christmas,” says Sinyor. Yet this situation has only made him more determined to ensure The Unseen doesn’t live up to its title too literally. He has already taken out adverts in the national press asking Disney’s CEO, Bob Iger, to release a single screen in central London on 15 December. “Be afraid of us the Empire need not,” reads the payoff line.

Still, not every film out that weekend considers The Last Jedi to be a threat. The Prince of Nothingwood’s director, Sonia Kronlund, says it would make an excellent double-bill with her documentary, since both are “about the childhood of cinema, in a way … Star Wars is taking adults back to childhood and Shaheen is a ‘child’ making movies.” But what would the Afghan film impresario Salim Shaheen, AKA the Prince of Nothingwood himself, have to say about this box office non-battle. “I know exactly what he would say: ‘In my film, everything is real; we shot with real bullets. In their Star Wars films, nothing is real.’”

Kronlund is amused by her subject’s bravado, but when it comes to what really matters, she agrees that there’s really no comparison between the Hollywood franchise machine and passion-driven, independent film-makers all over the world, from Shaheen to Sinyor. “They would really risk their lives. These guys are true, genuine lovers of the cinema. Whereas Star Wars people don’t risk anything. Except for money, maybe.”