Editorial Staff
Announced by Lucasfilm last month, “21 Jump Street” helmers Phil Lord and Chris Miller are set to direct a standalone “Star Wars” film that fixes on the younger years of Millennium Falcon pilot Han Solo.
Needless to say, a new actor will be brought in to play the role made famous by Harrison Ford. Who? Too early to say. What Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy can say, however, is that Solo will likely be around 18 to 22 years old (around the same age Anakin Skywalker was in “Attack of the Clones”).
“He’ll definitely be probably in the high teens, low 20s,” Kennedy tells EW. “We’re not introducing you to a 10-year-old Han Solo.”
That means, of course, that rumours suggesting “Breaking Bad” alum Aaron Paul being up for the role are bogus.
Kennedy seems to be approaching the film the right away.
“We don’t want to spend time going back and answering a lot of questions that, quite frankly, I don’t think people want answered,” she says. “…I think the key here is that we are identifying an event or events in Han Solo’s life that gives you some idea of who he is and why he is the character we have all known to love…You can imagine, given who we’ve chosen to come in and direct, it should be very entertaining and funny. Han Solo is the character inside Star Wars that everybody knows has a wit and sense of humor. So that’s what this should be.”
Lawrence Kasdan and Jon Kasdan are writing the movie, which will focus on Solo’s adventures pre-Skywalker. Likely, we’ll see Lando, Jabba and Boba Fett again.
The “Han Solo” movie is due for release in May of 2018.
Meanwhile, EW has also published an article in which they cast and crew of “The Force Awakens” recollect what a magical moment it was when, on set, Han and Chewbacca (Peter Mayhew) stepped back on the Millennium Falcon again.
“The minute Harrison and Chewie walked on board the Millennium Falcon — that was incredible,” Kennedy said. “Every single person on the set was stunned. I remember turning around, and there must have been 200 people gathered behind me — completely quiet. I didn’t even know they were there. The whole crew had stopped working, staring at the monitor, because it was so iconic.”
“It was sort of surreal for everybody, and it wasn’t just Han, it wasn’t just Harrison. It was seeing all this stuff,” writer Kasdan said. “The Millennium Falcon has been a big part of my life, from Empire to Jedi to Force Awakens — and now I’ve written a movie about the young Han. So the Falcon has enormous resonance for me. And I don’t know if you can imagine what it would be like to watch things being shot on that set with those people.”
