Star Wars Han Solo Movie Confirms Alden Ehrenreich Casting

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It’s Official: Alden Ehrenreich Confirmed as Young Han Solo; Filming, Casting Details Revealed

By Adam Chitwood

Published Jul 17, 2016

Plus, find out when filming begins and what the audition process was like.

Lucasfilm made official today what we’ve already known for a few months: Alden Ehrenreich will lead the upcoming Young Han Solo Star Wars spinoff film. The news was announced during the “Future Filmmakers” panel at Star Wars Celebration Europe earlier today, as the film’s directors—Phil Lord and Chris Miller—were joined onstage by Ehrenreich himself. The kicker? Lord and Miller revealed that they saw 3,000 people for the role—including Taron Egerton (Kingsman: The Secret Service) and Jack Reynor (Sing Street)—but Ehrenreich was literally the first actor they auditioned. The two promptly apologized to Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy for wasting money, as the casting process continued for six months and included Ehrenreich going on the Millennium Falcon before the Beautiful Creatures actor finally came away with the role.

Ehrenreich broke out further this year with a scene-stealing role in the Coen Brothers comedy Hail, Caesar!, and when we learned he was on the shortlist to play Han Solo, it immediately seemed kind of perfect. Lord and Miller, following their smashing success in both the animation world (The LEGO Movie) and live-action (21 Jump Street, 22 Jump Street), signed on to direct the Star Wars anthology film last year, and are currently still working on the script with screenwriters Lawrence Kasdan and Jon Kasdan.

alden-ehrenreich-hail-caesar — Image via Universal

The filmmakers revealed that they just moved to London to begin prep work for the untitled film a couple of days ago, and they added during the panel today that filming on the picture won’t begin until January or early February of 2017, so there’s still quite a bit of work to be done. But boy is this project off to a good start.

Catch up on all of our Star Wars Celebration coverage by clicking here, or peruse the recent links below some photos Perri snapped during today's Future Filmmakers panel. The untitled Han Solo film opens in theaters on May 25, 2018.