For a time, Lucasfilm seemed poise to explore the galaxy’s future concurrently —Daisy Ridley’s Rey Skywalker saga—while also filling gaps in the “Star Wars” mythology. A prequel film like “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” made a billion-plus at the box office. Still, that early prequel-movie success was quickly cut short by “Solo: A Star Wars Story” (2018), which failed at the global box office earning only $393 million after extensive and pricey reshoots. This led the studio to rethink theatrical plans, including pausing an “Obi-Wan Kenobi” movie and regrouping to chart a new path forward. As Disney+ was about to launch, the company found a new arena in streaming as “The Mandalorian” became a massive smash hit.
Before Alden Ehrenreich was ultimately selected for “Solo: A Star Wars Story,” there had been a massive casting search for someone to play the cocky young smuggler. One of those contenders was British actor Taron Egerton (“Black Bird,” “Kingsman”). He revealed on the Happy Sad Confused podcast (listen below) that he took himself out of the running after initially auditioning for the part.
“I’ll be honest, I got on the Falcon. I was with Chewie. I was in the full costume,” Egerton revealed for the first time. “I felt like I got there, I did it, I lived it. It just felt to me like I didn’t feel… like you know when we mentioned earlier, that thing when I read the ‘Kingsman’ script and I was like, ‘This is… I’ve gotta do this. This is my part,’” he told the host. “[With ‘Solo’], I just didn’t feel it.”
Despite the studio’s push for television projects, we shouldn’t expect a Disney+ series focused on Han Solo anytime soon. Co-writer/producer Lawrence Kasdan (“The Empire Strikes Back”) spoke with Inverse recently and downplayed the idea of a “Solo” streaming series being in the cards while also teasing his interest in a second feature film.
“No, there’s not any talk of that,” Kasdan says when asked about a potential follow-up series, knocking down a lot of Internet rumors that have surfaced over the years about a ‘Solo’ series in development. “I’ve never been particularly drawn to expanding [Solo] into a show. But, I do talk to Jon [Kasdan] and Ron [Howard] a lot about what went right and what went wrong with the ‘Solo’ experience. I would be more interested in doing another movie, not a TV series.”
When it comes to the future of Han Solo, all we really know is that an “event series” focused on Donald Glover’s Lando Calrissian had been in the works at Lucasfilm with the help of writer/director Justin Simien (“Dear White People,” “Haunted Mansion”). What other characters could appear in the in-development project has yet to be announced. We’re still uncertain if “Lando” will ever get made, considering how busy Glover is these days (and considering how many directing gigs Simien has taken since then). Then again, you never know what is cooking behind the scenes at Lucasfilm as they’re about to release the first episode of “Andor” next month, a prequel series focusing on “Rogue One” character Cassian Andor played by Diego Luna.
