The Han Solo Movie May Be Returning To A Classic Star Wars Planet

Harrison Ford as Han Solo

Following in the footsteps of fellow Star Wars Anthology entry Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, next year's Han Solo movie will jump back into the past to explore the origins of everyone's favorite smuggler from a galaxy far, far away. With shooting already several months, in, we've slowly learned more about what this spinoff will have to offer, including basic plot details, who's comprising the main cast and even some rumored mystery characters. Now a new photograph from production indicates that at some point in this adventure, we could see Han Solo back on Tatooine, the planet where we first met Harrison Ford's iteration of the character in A New Hope.

New pictures have surfaced online from the Han Solo's shoot at Fuerteventura on the Canary Islands, specifically overhead shots of a desert set with some noticeably Star Wars-ian structures. You can head over to Prensa Imperial to look at the pictures yourself, but longtime Star Wars fans will no doubt notice that the architecture looks a lot like the buildings seen on Tatooine in A New Hope and The Phantom Menace. Granted, The Force Awakens did introduce Jakku, another desert planet, so there's a slim chance that could be where the younger Han finds himself. However, given Han's connection to Tatooine and how the buildings on that set look, it seems likelier that the Han Solo movie will be revisiting that familiar, but hardly pleasant, planet.

Star Wars Tatooine city

Tatooine is notable for being where both Anakin and Luke Skywalker grew up, although the latter spent a lot longer there than his father. In Han Solo's case, though, it's where he did business with fellow criminals, especially in Mos Eisley, that hive of scum and villainy. Since the Han Solo movie is finally shedding light (in the official canon, at least) on how Han got involved in the smuggling life years before he became a Rebel hero, maybe Tatooine will be one of the places where he starts to establish his reputation. Who knows, perhaps during his time on the desert world he'll run into a certain Hutt crime lord who will one day hang him on his wall as a decoration?

The Han Solo movie will follow the eponymous protagonist from ages 18 to 24, charting how he met Chewbacca, obtained the Millennium Falcon and "got his name." The movie's main cast includes Alden Ehrenreich as Han, Donald Glover as Lando Calrissian, Woody Harrelson as Beckett, Emilia Clarke, Thandie Newton, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Michael K. Williams, Ian Kenny and Joonas Suotamo as Chewbacca. 21 Jump Street duo Phil Lord and Chris Miller are handling directing duties, while Lawrence and Jon Kasdan wrote the script.

The Han Solo movie will shoot first in theaters on May 25, 2018.

Adam Holmes
Senior Content Producer

Connoisseur of Marvel, DC, Star Wars, John Wick, MonsterVerse and Doctor Who lore, Adam is a Senior Content Producer at CinemaBlend. He started working for the site back in late 2014 writing exclusively comic book movie and TV-related articles, and along with branching out into other genres, he also made the jump to editing. Along with his writing and editing duties, as well as interviewing creative talent from time to time, he also oversees the assignment of movie-related features. He graduated from the University of Oregon with a degree in Journalism, and he’s been sourced numerous times on Wikipedia. He's aware he looks like Harry Potter and Clark Kent.