Earlier this year, Solo: A Star Wars Story suffered a sad end at the box office, so perhaps it’s only appropriate that things started off on a slightly depressing note for star Alden Ehrenreich as well.
Granted, getting cast as a lead in a Star Wars movie can often work wonders for an actor’s profile, so you can be sure that Ehrenreich was pretty pleased when he heard that he’d be playing one of the most famous characters of the whole saga. Nonetheless, it would’ve probably been an even more exciting day if he could share this news with his friends, but during a roundtable discussion on the Solo Blu-ray, Ehrenreich recalled how Disney forced him to keep his success to himself.
“I called my family, I told them, but like, all my friends, I couldn’t tell anybody really and it wasn’t even going to be announced for three months. And so I didn’t know what to do, but I felt I should do something, so, I like went to the beach, by myself, and walked around. And there was the pier there so I went to the pier and I was like ‘I guess I’ll ride a ride.’ So I just rode a roller coaster by myself.”
Well, they don’t call him Solo for nothing.
Little did Ehrenreich know at the time, but the movie’s journey from script to screen would be a rollercoaster in itself, with the film undergoing heavy reshoots under Ron Howard after initial directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller were fired from the project.
Now that Solo: A Star Wars Story has provided the series with its first outright box office misfire, you probably shouldn’t bet on a sequel being announced anytime soon. In fact, the future for this whole franchise is looking pretty uncertain at the moment, with Disney recently suggesting that there’ll be a slowdown in Star Wars releases after Episode IX comes out on December 20th, 2019. Still, if this Boba Fett movie ever gets off the ground then perhaps there’s a chance that Ehrenreich’s run in the franchise isn’t over quite yet. The odds may be slim, but that’s never bothered Han before.