Disney’s young Han Solo film will likely have company

At this point, the only Star Wars fans who haven’t heard about the upcoming Han Solo anthology film are those who’ve been living inside an Exogorth, which has been living inside an asteroid. But ignore the fact that we’ve just made the nerdiest Star Wars reference we could think of and focus on the fact that The Daily News is reporting this film will likely get the full trilogy treatment.

The outlet quotes an unnamed insider as saying, “They [Disney execs] feel that his [Alden Ehrenreich] character has the right potential to become a central figure in several movies. They’re keeping things under wraps at the moment, but the deal is that he has signed for at least three movies.” The source also gushes over the potential for unique characters and situations to arise during the space cowboy’s adventures: “Given that Han’s early adventures do not need to be tied to the Empire, it leaves story lines open with the opportunity to really give fans something different. They can explore new galaxies and crazy creatures and bring in a wide array of new characters.”

Unnamed insiders always give us a bit of pause, so you’ll want to take this with a teeny-tiny grain of salt — but it does seem to make a lot of sense. Trilogies are pretty much par for the Star Wars course and we live in a world where every reasonably successful film is worthy of at least one sequel — and preferably a franchise.

The news comes with the caveat that the probable trilogy will only take place if the first film does well but — other than death and taxes — few things are more certain than Star Wars properties raking in buku bucks.

In landing the Han Solo role, 26-year old Alden Ehrenreich beat out a huge and talented field that included the likes of Miles Teller (Whiplash) and Taron Egerton (Kingsman: The Secret Service). Disney reportedly screen tested thousands of actors before landing on the Hail, Caeser! actor.

Unfortunately, we’ll have to wait quite a while to find out whether or not they’re right. The still-untitled film won’t be hitting theaters until May 25, 2018.