You thought Disney buying the rights to Star Wars was just going to end with the extra three episodes in the original saga? GUESS AGAIN.
The timeline of Star Wars releases that Disney has planned calls for a new Star Wars-related film every year between now and 2020. With Episode VIII scheduled for release in 2017, the next cab officially off the rank is the first in a series of splintered spinoff films – stories that move away from the Skywalker-centric narrative that has dominated all Star Wars films up until this point.
The first, Rogue One, is scheduled for release in December of this year, and focuses on a group of Rebel spies who conspire to steal the plans for the Death Star (which fills in the storyline of how Princess Leia Organa wound up with them in the original Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope before she gave them to R2-D2).
The second film, however, is set to delve into the backstory of everyone’s favourite scruffy-looking nerf herder, Han Solo.
The origin film, of course, won’t be featuring Harrison Ford, due to his not-being-young-anymore-ness. And thus Disney has been on the lookout for a suitable actor to play Young Solo.
Variety is reporting that the list of potential actors has been whittled down from thousands to about a dozen, and the list reads as a veritable who’s who of young Hollywood.
On the list is James Franco‘s younger brother Dave Franco, The Spectacular Now‘s Miles Teller, Logan Lerman, Ansel Elgort, Jack Reynor, Scott Eastwood, Emory Cohen, and Blake Jenner, among others.
The Solo spinoff film is not scheduled to begin filming until next January, but the studio is keen to get the role of Young Solo cast ASAP in order to, potentially, have him appear in a small Rogue One cameo.
The Han Solo standalone film will be directed by The LEGO Movie/21 & 22 Jump Street helmers Phil Miller and Christopher Lord.
It has a tentative scheduled release date of May 25, 2018.
Photos: Paul Archuleta, Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images.
Source: Variety.
