The Scorecard Review news
News: Entertainment Weekly reports that Disney is in the early stages of development on Star Wars spin-off films centered around bounty hunter Boba Fett and a young Han Solo. Disney and Lucasfilm declined to comment. Earlier in the week, Ain't It Cool's Harry Knowles reported that there will be a Yoda-centric film as well. Source: Entertainment Weekly, Ain't It Cool News
Thoughts by TSR: The Star Wars news isn’t slowing down. First there was the very cool sounding Seven Samurai-inspired standalone film by Zack Snyder (that he ended up denying). Then we found out that J.J. Abrams is going from Star Trek Into Darkness into Star Wars: Episode VII. Ain’t It Cool News reported that there might be a Yoda film in the works, and now we have Entertainment Weekly’s sources saying a Han Solo origin story and a Boba Fett adventure are in development too. Honestly, neither one gets me all that excited. The Boba Fett spin-off is fine, I guess. Might as well see what he was up to before taking an ill-fated trip into the sarlacc pit. Captain America: The First Avenger director Joe Johnston, who designed Boba Fett’s armor, told Screen Rant about his desire to make a film focused on the bounty hunter. There’s no word on directors for any of these potential films yet, but I hope Johnston ends up being involved. As for the young Han Solo film, I’m reminded of a Patton Oswalt stand-up bit about the prequels: “I don’t give a shit where the stuff I love comes from.” Indeed.
Anyway, EW's Anthony Breznican says they are still very early in the process, so we’ll see if this actually comes to fruition. If it does, the Boba Fett film would take place sometime during the original trilogy (either between the original Star Wars and Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back or between Empire and Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi). The Han Solo film would be set between Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith and Star Wars. Unless they de-age Harrison Ford a la Jeff Bridges in TRON: Legacy – I’d have a bad feeling about that – they’ll need to find a younger actor to take up the mantle of everybody’s favorite scruffy looking nerf herder. Personally I like the idea of Garrett Hedlund.
Due to the timeline, original trilogy favorites such as Darth Vader and Jabba the Hut could theoretically return if these end up getting made. Yesterday, Disney chairman and CEO Bob Iger told CNBC that Simon Kinberg (Sherlock Holmes) and Lawrence Kasdan (Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Empire Strikes Back) are currently working on screenplays for standalone films. I suspect the news will continue coming between now and Star Wars: Episode VII in 2015. Even though none of it has me overly excited so far, I’m interested to see how much of it comes to pass.