The search for a new Han Solo is rapidly becoming America’s biggest thirst trap.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, an astonishing 2,500 actors are auditioning to play a young Solo in Phil Lord and Christopher Miller’s upcoming, as-yet-untitled “Star Wars” spinoff movie, which is slated for release in May 2018.
We’re not talking about randos lining up outside the Disney lot here. At least not exclusively. Many of the hottest (young, white, male) actors in Hollywood are gunning for the part: Miles Teller, Logan Lerman, Dave Franco, Ansel Elgort, Ed Westwick, Rami Malek, Aaron Taylor-Johnson. Even Tom Felton, who played Draco Malfoy in the “Harry Potter” movies!
The plot of the movie — which Lord and Miller are playfully referring to as “Red Cup,” as in, you know, Solo cups — is as yet a tightly kept secret. All we know so far is that it’s an origin story for Han Solo.
But it’s not hard to figure out why so many actors want the role. Playing Han Solo in 1977’s “Star Wars” transformed Harrison Ford from a journeyman TV actor (in the pre-Golden Age era, mind you) to an international superstar. The “Star Wars” movies — along with the other huge movies he starred in afterward, including the “Indiana Jones” series — have netted Ford hundreds of millions of dollars over the past four decades.
Lord and Miller are also huge draws. Time and time again, they’ve turned unpromising material — Legos, a bad ’80s TV show — into well-reviewed blockbuster movies like “The Lego Movie,” “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs” and “21 Jump Street.” So expectations of what they’ll do with Han Solo, who’s great to begin with, are sky high.
Han Solo fans, of course, don’t have to wait until 2018 to see their favorite space smuggler. Harrison Ford will be reprising the role in “Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens,” which comes out on Dec. 18.
Also on HuffPost:
– This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
