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It's no secret that Lucasfilm is developing a Star Wars spin-off centred around everyone's favorite nerf herder Han Solo. Come 2018 Harrison Ford won't be the only name associated with the charming rogue - the hunt is currently on for a twentysomething actor to tackle the part in that standalone adventure. It's a tough call for casting directors, and one that was very nearly made in 2002, as George Lucas planned to include a pre-teen Solo in Revenge of the Sith.
Early versions of the screenplay made subtle references to coming events in the original trilogy; and Lucas threw in what the folks at Den of Geek dub a "fleeting appearance" of a ten-year old Solo wandering Chewbacca's home planet Kashyyk. His cameo would have tweaked the canon in a big way - Chewie becomes a father figure to the young boy, raising him like his own son.
That's not all. Perhaps the most intriguing tidbit unearthed by the site involves a moment we've never seen onscreen - Han Solo's meeting with Yoda. In fact the one and only line Lucas penned for the youthful Solo was during an exchange between the pair, “I found part of a transmitter droid near the east bay. I think it’s still sending and receiving signals," Solo says to the Jedi Master, who replies “Good, good. Track this we can back to the source. Find General Grievous, we might…”
Thankfully, Han and Chewie's relationship never strayed into father-son territory. But the idea of a young Solo made it quite far along in the development process, as concept artist Ian McCraig inked several pieces of the scrappy Corellian. “It’s not in the script anymore,” he reveals in The Art Of Revenge Of The Sith book, “but we were told that Han Solo was on Kashyyyk and that he was being raised by Chewbacca. He’s such a persnickety guy later on – he always has to have the best of everything – so I thought it’d be great if when he was a kid, he was an absolute slob.”
Directed by Phil Lord and Chris Miller, and written by Lawrence Kasdan and Jon Kasdan, the untitled Han Solo movie is scheduled to open May 25, 2018.
Images: Lucasfilm
