Despite the on-set drama that lead to countless news stories, and tepid box office returns that forced Lucasfilm to reconsider their entire approach to Star Wars movies, there are still plenty of fans of Solo: A Star Wars Story. Set before the events of the 1977 original film, the movie told the story of the iconic character first played by Harrison Ford, filling in the gaps on his back story. Alden Ehrenreich took on the titular role for the movie, with new Chewbacca actor Joonas Suotamo appearing as his big hairy sidekick, with Suotamo counting himself among the fans of the movie and hoping they get a chance to revisit that era of the galaxy far, far away.
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In a new interview, Suotamo opened up about working on the movie, confirming that he still speaks with his co-star from the 2018 film and hopes to work with him again.
“I do keep in touch with Alden every once in a while,” Suotamo told The Hollywood Reporter. “But I haven’t seen him since the premieres. Every now and then, we’ll message each other, and I hope he’s doing great. If we ever return to Solo, I can’t wait to work with him again.”
Suotamo went on to call the film a great experience, but calling it a long shoot and opening up about how the drama behind-the-scenes effected him and his cast mates, which is to say…not at all.
“All that stuff happens outside of the film set. Actors don’t get involved with that. We were still having fun and shooting a film that we enjoyed. Visual effects supervisor Rob Bredow, who now runs ILM, took so many photos and made a book of behind-the-scenes photography. He really captured the process, and it was wonderful looking back and reminiscing about those scenes.”
The future of the Solo characters is up in the air following its debut. Solo went on to gross $393 million worldwide, the lowest box office of any live-action Star Wars film. Despite a less than stellar response, the film did end with a few story threads left dangling like the reveal that Darth Maul is alive and wearing giant robot legs and that Emilia Clarke’s Qi’ra was working for him in the Crimson Dawn crime syndicate.
“To be honest, I think the challenge has more to do with the foreign box office than the U.S.,” writer Jonathan Kasdan previously shared on Twitter about sequels. “Personally, I think there are great Star Wars movies to be made that don’t need to cost quite so much. Hopefully that will be the trend in years to come, and maybe, just maybe, that trend will allow us, one way or another, to tell more stories.”
One potential way that the characters of Solo could be brought up once again is in the upcoming Obi-Wan Kenobi series that’s in the works for Disney+. The series and Solo reportedly take place around the same time and since we know Han Solo and Chewbacca have plenty of business on Tatooine there’s an easy opportunity for the characters to cross paths in a surprising way.
Do you want to see a follow-up for Solo: A Star Wars Story? Sound off in the comments below!
