Earlier this month it was revealed that Alden Ehrenreich (Hail, Caesar!) was cast as the new Han Solo for a Star Wars Anthology film focused around the character's early years. Now, screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan (The Empire Strikes Back, Return Of The Jedi, The Force Awakens) has revealed that the spinoff film will begin shooting in early 2017. “You know, Chris Miller and Phil Lord are going to direct it,” said Kasdan, as reported by StarWarsNews.net. “They’re great, funny and imaginative and we’ve had a great time together. My son [Jon] and I wrote the script and Chris and Phil are working on it and they’re about to move to London to start shooting in January. And it should be fun.”
Kasdan also briefly spoke about the circumstances that led to him co-writing The Force Awakens with J.J. Abrams. “I was originally going to just write ‘Han,’ but I had contracted to be in the story group on ‘Episode 7,’ which became The Force Awakens,” said Kasdan. “And then there were problems. A wonderful writer, Michael Arndt, just couldn’t do the time pressure, and people were being hired in England and it was enormous pressure and he stepped away. We stayed in contact and he’s a lovely man, then J.J. [Abrams] and I took over, and now I found myself instead just doing Han and consulting on Force Awakens, we were actually writing Episode 7 together and it happened very fast.” Kasdan has maintained that the Han Solo film will be his last writing entry in the Star Wars universe.
The Han Solo Anthology film is scheduled for release on May 25, 2018.