Jon Favreau likes his bread buttered on both sides. He manages to juggle being a sought after character actor, most famously playing Tony Stark’s bodyguard buddy Happy Hogan, and being a top-flight director. He introduced us to the MCU in 2008’s Iron Man and recently had a critical and financial smash hit with the live-action The Jungle Book, which he’s soon to follow up with an all-star remake of The Lion King (for a very long time I thought he was also President Obama’s speechwriter, but it turns out that was another Jon Favreau).
In front of the cameras, though, his next appearance is to come in a galaxy far, far away in Solo: A Star Wars Story. Earlier in the week, director Ron Howard revealed on Twitter that Favreau would be voicing “a very cool and important alien character,” immediately sparking a ton of speculation as to which Star Wars creature would best fit him.
Now, we’re all but certain we have the answer:
#Solo #StarWars pic.twitter.com/IFovO3mGm0
— Jon Favreau (@Jon_Favreau) February 16, 2018
Yup, it looks like his dulcet tones will be emitting from this freaky four-armed shaved monkey creature thing. It appears as is if this little dude is quite the pilot, too, apparently playing a key role in the initial crew that Woody Harrelson’s Tobias Beckett puts together. The rest of them are Han himself (Alden Ehrenreich), Chewie, (Joonas Suotamo), Han’s ex-girlfriend Qi’Ra (Emilia Clarke), Lando (Donald Glover), Val (Thandie Newton) and self-built droid L3-37 (Phoebe Waller-Bridge). It’s quite the cast, and Favreau should be a great fit for the role, whatever the character ends up doing in the film.
Of course, real Star Wars fans will know that this isn’t Favreau’s first appearance in the franchise. He initially turned up in six episodes of The Clone Wars, voicing Mandalorian warrior Pre Vizsla (until he was killed by Darth Maul).
Solo: A Star Wars Story has had a famously rocky production, but let’s hope that Disney, Lucasfilm and Ron Howard can pull something genuinely great out of the fire. Whatever happens, I’ll be there on May 25th to catch it on the big screen. Will you?
