It's just a few weeks now until Solo: A Stars Wars Story and it sounds like we can start becoming a bit more eager to see the prequel. According to early reactions to the spin-off, Solo is a fun and entertaining movie filled with awesome set pieces and a great cast. Solo is set some number of years before A New Hope, but the movie still has plenty of connections to the original trilogy. It certainly helped that is had the father-son duo of Lawrence and Jon Kasdan in its corner, which Kathleen Kennedy feels really helped the movie draw inspiration from the original trilogy.
I got to work with Larry Kasdan who had done The Empire Strikes Back and [Return of the] Jedi, and he worked with his son on this movie, Jon Kasdan. So I think that was one of the most enjoyable things because Larry really knows this story, and he really knows the characters, so we were finding lots of little new details that we could put in this film.
Lawrence Kasdan is a screenwriter who has worked on Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, and The Force Awakens, and the writer was recruited as the co-writer of Solo: Star Wars Story. It was a no-brainer decision to bring in a writer who worked closely on the original trilogy to craft a movie about a younger Han Solo, one of the most popular of all the Star Wars characters. Pretty much all of Han's younger days has remained a mystery (to those that didn't read the Legends books at least), so who better to provide an origin story than Kasdan? The Star Wars veteran wrote the movie with his son, Jon Kasdan, and the two used their deep knowledge of the character to pen his origin.
While attending the red carpet premiere of Solo: A Star Wars Story, Kathleen Kennedy spoke with HeyUGuys about the movie and what it was like to work with the Kasdans. As should come as little surprise, Larry Kasdan knows these characters quite well, having had a hand in some of the most popular films in the franchise. His experiences on the original trilogy gave him said knowledge, and he then applied it to writing Solo, which was no doubt a great thing for the movie. Similarly, Jon Kasdan probably had no shortage of Star Wars in his life.
Solo: A Star Wars Story arrives in theaters on May 25. To learn more about the prequel, here's everything we know so far. There are plenty more blockbusters hitting the theaters this summer, so stay up to date with our list of must-see summer movies. For everything else, here's our 2018 movie release schedule.
