Alden Ehrenreich had only a handful of roles to his credit when he landed the role of a lifetime playing the young Han Solo in Solo: A Star Wars StoryBut the film that followed probably didn’t play out exactly as he’d hoped. He was hired by the film’s original directors, Phil Lord and Chris Miller, but during production they left the project and were replaced by Ron Howard. The movie wound up getting mixed reviews and bombed at the box office; to date, it remains the lowest-grossing live-action Star Wars movie in history.

Ehrenreich hasn’t done much since Solo besides a starring role in Peacock’s one-season adaptation of the famous sci-fi novel Brave New World. But he’s making a big comeback in 2023. He’ll soon be seen in Cocaine Bear, and he’s also got upcoming roles in Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer and the Marvel TV series Ironheart. 

So it’s not like Ehrenreich needs another Han Solo movie; he’s doing just fine. But Solo has its fans, and they want to know whether they’ll ever see another. In an interview with UPROXX, Ehrenreich said while he has no idea if he’ll ever get to play Han Solo again, he would “love” to do it if the opportunity presented himself.

Solo: A Star Wars Story
Lucasfilm
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Here’s what he had to say:

If it was the right iteration and the right thing, I would love it. Because, for me, in the first movie you watch him become Han. I got to be Han Solo for the last 15 minutes of the movie, maybe. And so being Han Solo is the fun part. And I have no fucking idea if there is ever a world where any of that happens, and if it happens, great, if it doesn’t, whatever. But it was really great to … that’s what’s appealing to me about it because in a way they built this sort of origin story for when he becomes who he is, but then that guy is the guy that’s really fun and it’s a ball to play that character specifically.

Given how the first Solo movie performed, it seems highly unlikely there will ever be another. But under the right circumstances, I could see a Disney+ series. It also seems possible to me you could bring Ehrenreich’s Han Solo back as a supporting player in some other show, the way Luke Skywalker showed up on The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett.

Behind-the-scenes issues aside, though, here is the problem with Solo as a concept: We already knew the young Han Solo from Star Wars. It wasn’t like Ewan McGregor in the Star Wars prequels and Obi-Wan Kenobi, who got to play a character audiences only knew as a mysterious old man as a young Jedi. In that case, it almost felt like watching a totally different person — or at least he had room to make the character his own. Ehrenreich not only had to replace Harrison Ford, he had to somehow channel him without imitating him. That’s a really tall order.

Ehrenreich’s Cocaine Bear opens in theaters on Friday.

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