Star Wars: Young Han Solo Actor Short List Down to About a Dozen

The currently untitled young Han Solo Star Wars Story film is reportedly down to seven possible cast members for the lead, Variety reports. Citing sources, but cautioning that no actor has so much as tested for the role yet, they say these actors are among "about a dozen" that will go further in the process: Miles Teller, Ansel Elgort, Dave Franco, Scott Eastwood, Jack Reynor, Logan Lerman, Emory Cohen, and Blake Jenner.

The actors who test for directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller and producer (and studio head) Kathleen Kennedy will have extensive NDAs as this story, telling the tale of Han Solo before he gets involved with the Rebel Alliance in Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope, will be a closely guarded secret. The only things current Star Wars canon has told us is that he was once in the Imperial Navy, he and Chewbacca have a longstanding friendship, and he won the Millennium Falcon from one Lando Calrissian.

Of the names listed above, some should be very familiar to ComicBook.com readers. Lerman was one of the reported finalists for the role of Spider-Man in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and Miles Teller was in the box office disaster Fantastic Four last summer. He's also a star in the Divergent films, alongside Ansel Elgort, the youngest finalist (born in 1994). Most of the other actors are mid-80s babies. Franco has no action experience, but did voice a character in The Lego Movie for Lord and Miller.

Blake Jenner has an interesting "degrees of separation" connection to the one, true Han Solo, Harrison Ford. Jenner is married to Melissa Benoist, who stars as the titular Supergirl, alongside Ford's wife Calista Flockhart on the CBS series.

While the Han Solo film won't start shooting until January 2017 (there are already two Star Wars movies in production as of January, after all), Variety says the casting is being done early in case the character might appear in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, the first of the new non-episodic films, which has about a month left of principal photography. That could be slightly awkward, as the timeline for Rogue One should place it only directly before A New Hope (it spins out of the opening crawl of that movie, after all), and having a new actor playing Han Solo in a film set only months before the original could be... reluctantly received by fans.

The unlisted names that would round out the dozen finalists (only 8 names are given in the report) could include unknown or lesser-known actors, a common practice for Star Wars films. The untitled Han Solo film is scheduled for May 25, 2018.