We probably should have seen this one coming.
As production officially wraps on the upcoming Star Wars Han Solo spin-off movie, director Ron Howard (Apollo 13, Rush) posted a short thirty second video on his Twitter account on the morning of Oct. 17, revealing the official title for the film — Solo: A Stars Wars Story.
“As we wrap up production I just want to take this moment to thank an incredibly talented cast and crew for their incredibly hard work,” says Howard in the video. “To the fans out there, I hope you’ve enjoyed the pictures that I’ve been sharing..pictures I’ve been taking from the set of….can we say the name of the movie?” He’s then given a large title card with the official logo, and ends by saying “I’ll see you next year.”
The Arrested Development narrator was brought on to direct the project earlier this summer after LEGO Movie and 22 Jump Street filmmakers Chris Miller and Phil Lord were abruptly fired by Kathleen Kennedy of Lucasfilm over “creative differences.”
Since being brought on board to the project, Howard has been a one man promotional team — trying to recover from the bad press the Lord and Miller news received by constantly posting pictures from the set to his Twitter and Instagram.
And so on.
Besides the newly announced title, there’s not a whole lot we actually know about the film as of yet. Alden Ehrenreich (Hail, Caesar!) is playing a young Solo, as the movie is being set before the events of A New Hope. We know that Solo and Chewbacca are going to be teaming up for some whimsical adventures and that we’re going to see their first interaction with Lando Calrissian (Donald Glover) somewhere along the ling. At this point I think it’s pretty safe to assume that the infamous Kessel Run is going to be in there as well.
Yet, besides Howard’s social media post, it’s been pretty quiet from the folks over at Lucasfilm about the Han Solo prequel. At least we have a title now — granted, not a terribly exciting or original title but a title nonetheless.
Solo: A Star Wars Story also stars Emilia Clarke (Game of Thrones), Paul Bettany (The Avengers), Woody Harrelson (basically every movie ever made), Thandie Newton (Westworld) and Warwick Davis (Harry Potter). It is being released on May 25, 2018.