Rumor: 'Han Solo' Spinoff Pushed To December 2018

So far, we’ve seen two films released since Disney‘s acquisition of Lucasfilm, and both have been monster hits: “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” totaled $2.1 billion worldwide, and it looks like “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” will easily cross $1 billion worldwide. Both films were released in December, as will be the upcoming “Star Wars: Episode VIII” which, barring some kind of disaster, will also make a billion dollars and then some. Disney has clearly made the holiday season theirs, so why mess with a good thing?

According to the very well connected Making Star Wars, Phil Lord and Chris Miller‘s developing Han Solo spinoff movie starring Alden Ehrenreich, Donald Glover, and Emilia Clarke is now eyeballing a December 13, 2018 release date, which would push the movie back a few months from its currently planned slot of May 25, 2018. And the move makes a lot of sense.

With “Avengers: Infinity War” dropping on May 4, 2018, releasing a “Star Wars” film three weeks later doesn’t make much sense, and would potentially cut into the long tail play of the Marvel movie. Meanwhile, the only picture scheduled on the December 13, 2018 weekend is the Peter Jackson-produced “Mortal Engines” which lands the next day. (It should be noted, December 13th is a Thursday; presumably the sources Making Star Wars are counting the traditional Thursday evening showings as the “opening day”).

Again, this is not official, but given Disney’s current success in the December corridor, it stands to reason that making “Star Wars” a part of everyone’s holiday tradition is just good business. Thoughts? Let us know below.