Director Ron Howard answered in an interview with NME, when asked about a sequel to the 2018 film, that he doesn’t “think it’s a Lucasfilm priority“. Some fans can breathe a sigh of relief as Solo 2 is not in the works, for now, while others might still be hoping for another movie. Solo: A Star Wars Story was a part of Disney’s first batch of films it released following the purchase of Lucasfilm in 2012 for $4.05 billion. The launch of a new trilogy and a branch of spin-off series of films labeled “A Star Wars Story”, Rogue One, and Solo, were to be the tentpoles for Disney’s expansion of the Star Wars theatrical franchise but things did not go as planned.
The End of Theatrical Releases
Backlash, poor reviews, and decreasing ticket sales eventually led to the multiple theatrical projects either being canceled (Yoda) or put on hold indefinitely (Rogue Squadron), and once the new trilogy had concluded no other film has been released in theaters since. Solo: A Star Wars Story is said to have been budgeted upwards of $300 million but only brought in $393 million which is hardly considered a success for an expected blockbuster and at the time was the least amount of ticket sales ever reported for a Star Wars film. The film saw multiple iconic characters recast in an attempt to tell a new origin story while creating a new story arc. Fans were less than enthusiastic about the recasting and that, in part, could be partly to blame for the film’s less-than-stellar performance at the box office as head of Lucasfilm Kathleen Kennedy explained to Vanity Fair, there were lessons learned regarding recasting characters.
“There should be moments along the way when you learn things,” said Kennedy. “Now it does seem so abundantly clear that we can’t do that.”
Revived on Streaming
Disney/Lucasfilm would go on to re-strategize its approach with the Star Wars franchise. It would use the launch of the Disney+ streaming service as a platform to continue releasing Star Wars content and while still getting a mixed reception from fans and reviewers alike it has witnessed substantial viewership for the growing list of shows. One of the “A Story Wars Story” films, Rogue One, managed to see its lead character return for a series of his own in Andor and has even received praise from numerous reviewers for its lack of the usual Star Wars storytelling patterns.
Lucasfilm has not been afraid to bring back other iconic characters in their own shows either as seen with The Book of Boba Fett and Obi-Wan Kenobi. Ironically though Obi-Wan Kenobi actually uses original actors that are recast versions from the prequels portraying roles of the original trilogy in an attempt to do the same thing that Solo had tried to do. Ron Howard says that while Solo 2 is not happening, for those who are hoping for a sequel, hope still exists if fans put enough pressure on Lucasfilm to do it.
“But there’s some great characters launched, and the folks from Lucasfilm love the fans and really do listen so I would never say never – but I’m not aware of any concrete plans right now to extend the story or deal with that particular set of characters.”