In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, writer Lawrence Kasdan confirmed that before the Disney deal, he was already working on a Han Solo screenplay for George Lucas. However, when the Disney purchase of Lucasfilm happened, he put the unfinished screenplay on the backburner and started to work on ’The Force Awakens.’ Feeling burned out, the screenwriter enlisted his son Jon Kasdan to help him on the uncompleted ‘Solo’:
"When I was done, I was sort of burned out. And I said, ‘I don’t know, do we still want to do this Han thing?’…And they said, ‘Yeah! We really want you to go ahead with Han.’ And I said, ‘Well, my son, Jon, is very enthusiastic and full of ideas about the saga.’ And he had directed two movies and had done other things. ‘What if he came on and worked with me? Because that would give me a shot in the arm.’ And so, that’s exactly what happened. They made a deal with Jon, and he and I have been writing since for three years."
I’m sure Lucas had a very different movie in mind, but, alas, Disney has taken over and Kasdan can do the best he can to maintain whatever original vision he had for Lucas’ version. The creative freedom, or lack thereof, that Disney gives to its creatives is well-known and so what we will surely have is a film very much in the spirit of the last three Disney-Star Wars movies. We could have gotten something a little more unique with Lord and Miller at the reigns, but we all know what happened with their movie.
“Solo: A Star Wars Story” opens on May 25th.