Solo: A Star Wars Story is now just five months away from release and aside from a cast photo, we haven’t really seen anything from it. Granted, Lucasfilm has had the small matter of The Last Jedi to deal with, but the continued silence feels slightly ominous given Solo‘s notoriously troubled production. Now, however, it sounds as if Disney and Lucasfilm are about to properly lift the veil on the project, with a trailer rumored to be dropping very soon.
The news comes courtesy of Jordan Maison of Cinelinx, whose inside sources say Lucasfilm is warming their engines for a big promotional push in January:
“Welp…we’ll definitely be seeing some #Solo stuff within the next 2-3 weeks. Actually, probably sooner. Like coming up pretty quick.
First impressions count, and no doubt the studio will put their considerable marketing muscle into making Alden Ehrenreich’s take on Han Solo feel as close to Harrison Ford in A New Hope as possible. If they screw up our first look at him then you can guarantee a furious ‘Not My Han Solo’ movement will spring up quicker than the Millennium Falcon can do the Kessel Run.
This first trailer will also give us a better idea of the tone of the spinoff. Lucasfilm (and particularly Kathleen Kennedy) hated the ‘slacker comedy’ direction that Phil Lord and Chris Miller were headed in, firing them and bringing in the steady and reliable Ron Howard to reshoot much of the film. I’d imagine we can expect a somewhat more sober movie that’s more in line with previous entries in the canon than the departure that a Lord and Miller Solo promised.
Either way, there’s a hell of a lot riding on this first trailer. Disney’s Star Wars films have thus far pretty much had the Christmas market to themselves and have blown away everything else at the box office. Solo, on the other hand, is releasing on May 25th, meaning it’ll be competing against Disney’s own Avengers: Infinity War and have Deadpool 2 snapping at its heels a week or so later. Will that galaxy far, far away be able to reign supreme once again? We’ll find out soon enough.