Alden Ehrenreich Is The Frontrunner To Play Young Han Solo

Deadline reports that Hail, Caesar! scene stealer Alden Ehrenreich has emerged as the consensus choice to become a young Han Solo in the Phil Lord & Chris Miller-directed Star Wars Story film hitting theaters May 25, 2018.

The screen test process narrowed down the search for the highly-sought but definitely-intimidating take on the character defined by Harrison Ford in four previous movies. Kingsman star Taron Egerton and Transformers: Age of Extinction actor Jack Reynor are finalists but Deadline’s sources say Ehrenreich has pulled out ahead with an impressive audition.

With the film more than two years away, rumors abound that this casting decision portends an appearance in the Solo film’s predecessor, this December’s Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. In Star Wars Legends canon, Solo was an Imperial recruit who rebelled and freed Chewbacca, forming the life debt that would bind them for life. With a lot of focus on the Rebellion/Empire in Rogue One, perhaps we’ll see this origin, as a way to set up a more fun smuggler’s heist tale for his own flick.

Ehrenreich stars in Warren Beatty’s long-gestating Howard Hughes biopic coming this fall and has the war drama The Yellow Birds with Jennifer Aniston, Jack Huston (Ben-Hur) and Tye Sheridan (X-Men: Apocalypse) in the can.

SOURCE: Deadline