When Phil Lord and Christopher Miller were directing Solo: A Star Wars Story, Paul Bettany wasn’t even involved in the sci-fi blockbuster. The Wire‘s Michael K. Williams was cast as Dryden Vos, and strapped on the motion capture leotard to play a character that he described as an entirely digital creation that fell somewhere between a human and a mountain lion.
However, when the 21 Jump Street duo were given their marching orders by Kathleen Kennedy with just three weeks of principal photography left to go, Williams couldn’t return for Ron Howard’s extensive reshoots due to a scheduling conflict. Presumably to save a little cash on the effects budget, then, which was understandable when Solo‘s drastic overhaul had pushed the price tag up towards almost $300 million, Bettany ended up as a distinctly more humanoid looking version of the ruthless crime boss.
It wasn’t a flashy or particularly substantial part, and he didn’t even make it out of the movie alive after being stabbed and usurped by Emilia Clarke’s Qi’ra, but in a recent interview to promote the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s WandaVision, the 49 year-old admitted that he’d still love to return to the other major Disney franchise that he’s been involved in.
“Oh, I would love to mess around with Dryden Vos. I would love to mess around with Dryden Vos. I love that idea.”
Dryden Vos might have been killed off, but Bettany clearly has a solid working relationship with the Mouse House, and being dead hardly stopped him from returning in WandaVision. There are plenty of Star Wars shows on the horizon as well, should any of them feel the need to work Crimson Dawn into the script, but in terms of canon, the most obvious place would be Lando, given that the majority of the story is expected to be set in or around the same time period as Solo.