'Solo: A Star Wars Story' Director Drops Super Bowl Hint

Solo: A Star Wars Story director Ron Howard is hinting at a trailer debut airing during Sunday's [...]

By Cameron Bonomolo

Solo: A Star Wars Story director Ron Howard is hinting at a trailer debut airing during Sunday's Super Bowl 52.

"Midway thru a long flight. Back in the #Solo editing rooms now," Howard wrote, attached to a mid-flight snapshot from above the clouds. "[By the way], who's gonna win #SuperBowl2018?"

Disney and Lucasfilm are expected to launch Solo's marketing campaign during Sunday's big game, according to a Wednesday scoop from The Hollywood Reporter.

The TV spot will mark fans' anxiously awaited first look at the Star Wars spinoff, which has held off any marquee marketing as Star Wars: The Last Jedi has dominated the spotlight since its mid-December debut.

A full trailer is rumored to premiere Monday exclusively on ABC's Good Morning America before playing in theaters ahead of Disney-Marvel's Black Panther, opening February 16.

Disney dropped the trailer for Marvel Studios' Avengers: Infinity War on the morning talk show in November.

Despite its nearing release date, the studio has played things close to the chest with Solo: a leaked promotional image that surfaced in December offered fans a look at a younger Han Solo (Alden Ehrenreich), Chewbacca (Joonas Suotamo), and Lando Calrissian (Donald Glover), and Howard has offered various behind-the-scenes peeks through his Twitter page.

An official plot synopsis released last month tantalized fans with the promise of "daring escapades deep within a dark and dangerous criminal underworld" in "a journey that will set the course of one of the Star Wars saga's most unlikely heroes."

Original Solo directing team Phil Lord and Christopher Miller were fired from the Star Wars standalone last summer, leading Lucasfilm chief Kathleen Kennedy to tap the baseball cap-wearing veteran filmmaker to step in.

"I hope to honor the great work already done & help deliver on the promise of a Han Solo film," Howard wrote on Twitter following his appointment to director. "I'm beyond grateful to add my voice to the Star Wars Universe after being a fan since 5/25/77."

"I've been around the Star Wars universe from the beginning," Howard said in June.

"When I was being directed by George Lucas on American Graffiti in 1972, we were standing out in front of Mel's Drive-In in San Francisco where we were shooting and I said, 'Do you know what you think your next film might be?' And he said, 'Yeah, I want to do a science fiction movie, but a really fun one like Flash Gordon with the effects of Stanley Kubrick's 2001,'" Howard recalled. "I thought, 'That sounds like a kind of crazy idea.'"

Solo: A Star Wars Story opens May 25.

0comments
Start the Conversation

of