The Worst Star Wars Movie Getting A Sequel?
Writer Jonathan Kasdan is eager to make a sequel to Solo: A Star Wars Story, with Alden Ehrenreich returning to the lead role.
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Solo: A Star Wars Story died a pitiful death at the box office in 2018, but like Darth Maul himself, nothing is ever really gone at Lucasfilm. In a new interview with Josh Wilding of ComicBook.com, writer Jonathan Kasdan voiced his eagerness to pen a follow-up to Solo, as the passage of time has seemed to soften fan attitudes towards the spinoff, which featured Alden Ehrenreich in the lead role. Kasdan admits the initial fan backlash over the casting and the film itself caused him to be “conflicted” over the last couple of years, but he is ready to revisit the story and characters he set up in the film.
“I think the reason for a Solo 2 is if there’s a great reason and certainly, I’d be game if there were,” Kasdan said. “There were so many great characters that we were able to establish.”
Kasdan, who is the creator and writer of the Disney+ Willow sequel series, admits one of his motives behind the Star Wars sequel is to prove Alden Ehrenreich was the right choice to play a young Han Solo. Ehrenreich was mercilessly (and many say unfairly) criticized for his casting and portrayal by some fans, claiming he didn’t look and sound the part of a young Harrison Ford.
“I guess the strongest argument for a Solo 2 is that the movie was Alden’s journey to owning that mantle,” Kasdan said. “And by the end of it, I thought he really did, and he didn’t get the fun of getting to just inhabit it for a movie. So, I’d love to see him back.”
The second of the Star Wars spinoff films created in the Disney era, Solo’s troubled production history is legendary. The film’s original directors, Christopher Miller and Phil Lord, left the nearly-completed film after a clash of creative vision with Lucasfilm, and legendary director Ron Howard was brought in to save the project. He reportedly reshot about 70% of the film, and yet, it failed miserably at the box office with a domestic tally of just over $200 million in ticket sales, considered a flop in the Star Wars universe.
The film has its issues, obviously; the pacing is sleep-inducing, the cinematography is needlessly dim, and the shifts in tone are indicative of competing creative directions. Released in the months following the highly-divisive The Last Jedi, the resulting backlash did the film no favors, and fans stayed away in droves.
In recent months, rumors have abounded that Lucasfilm has been considering a way to revisit Solo, either in film or TV series. Earlier this year, there were reports that Emilia Clarke could return as Han’s love interest in her own Qi’ra spinoff series, that would explore the character’s life as a member of the Crimson Dawn crime syndicate, led by Darth Maul.
Jonathan’s father Lawrence Kasdan (writer of The Empire Strikes Back and Raiders of the Lost Ark) who co-wrote Solo also expressed his interest in a sequel. “I do talk to Jon and Ron a lot about what went right and what went wrong,” he said of the film. “I would be more interested in doing another movie, not a TV series.”
Jonathan Kasdan’s fondness for his experiences making Solo carried over to Willow, as he cast Erin Kellyman (who played Enfys Nest in the film) in the new series as the character Jade.
