George Lucas Was Planning A Han Solo Movie Before He Sold Lucasfilm

There has never been a better time to be a Star Wars fan.

Take The Last Jedi as an example. Rian Johnson’s spectacular (and surprisingly divisive) sequel has only been on the market for seven weeks and already, Disney and Lucasfilm are banging the drum in anticipation of Solo: A Star Wars Story, the standalone adventure movie that’s poised to uncover the mysterious origins behind the galaxy’s most endearing scoundrel.

Alden Ehrenreich is the man faced with the somewhat daunting task of playing the iconic hero popularized by Harrison Ford (Blade Runner 2049), but after Solo‘s back-to-back teasers, we’re willing to give him the benefit of the doubt…for now. If things had gone according to the original plan, though, we might have seen a completely different actor step into the role, and that’s because initially, George Lucas wanted to make a Han Solo movie before he sold Lucasfilm to Disney.

That juicy bit of trivia comes from an interview that Entertainment Weekly did with Lawrence Kasdan, who was set to pen the script for the spinoff several years ago. When Disney eventually took over, however, he was brought on board The Force Awakens and after such an all-consuming project, he was left feeling a little burned out. Thankfully, though, his son Jon was up to helping him and the two of them completed the screenplay for Solo together.

“When I was done, I was sort of burned out” says Kasdan. “And I said, ‘I don’t know, do we still want to do this Han thing?’…And they said, ‘Yeah! We really want you to go ahead with Han.’ And I said, ‘Well, my son, Jon, is very enthusiastic and full of ideas about the saga.’”

Continuing on, he said:

“And he had directed two movies and had done other things. ‘What if he came on and worked with me? Because, that would give me a shot in the arm.’ And so, that’s exactly what happened. They made a deal with Jon, and he and I have been writing since for three years.””

Interesting, eh? With Solo: A Star Wars Story now adorning the cover, Entertainment Weekly will likely roll out more scraps of intel over the coming days. And you can bet that we’ll be keeping a close eye on Ron Howard’s anthology flick as it begins to coalesce, particularly now that Disney is pushing ahead with a fifth Star Wars trilogy (Rian Johnson is in charge of the fourth) and multiple TV series set in that famous, distant galaxy.