Thursday 22 June 2017

Ron Howard steps in to save the Han Solo STAR WARS movie

Veteran director Ron Howard has rolled into town to take over the next Star Wars movie. The Solo Han Solo movie (apparently shooting under the working title Solo) was mostly done with shooting when "creative differences" led to directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller departing/being fired/being exiled to the spice mines of Kessel.

Ron Howard and George Lucas, who have collaborated several times.

Howard will be completing principal photography on the picture as well as helming reshoots later in the summer. Howard and producers Kathleen Kennedy and Lawrence Kasdan will be reviewing the footage shot by Lord and Miller to see what material can still be used and what will have to be reshot.

The film is still on track for release on 25 May 2018, just five months after Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi hits cinemas in December, although delays are likely if the production team decide more significant reshoots are needed.

Although Howard hasn't been involved in a Star Wars project before, he did star in George Lucas's 1973 movie American Graffiti (alongside a young Harrison Ford) which led to his casting in the sitcom Happy Days and kickstarted his Hollywood career, including collaborating on the movie Willow with Lucas, so there is some synchronicity involved in this news.

Rumours that Howard has said, at any point, "Hold my beer," and "I got this," have yet to be confirmed.

1 comment:

Mike Bonsiero said...

With all due respect to Howard, who is probably, in fairness, a much better director than the guys he is replacing, but I've felt for a while that the Solo movie is going to be a minor Waterloo for Disney with the Star Wars franchise. Their first two attempts have been well received (and rightfully so) and The Last Jedi will have a lot of good will because of Hamill's return and it being Fisher's last movie. But having someone other than Harrison Ford play Han Solo is going to feel wrong to a lot of people even if they do everything right, and changing directors mid stream doesn't make it seem like everything will be done right.