Fun fact: it was George's idea to do a Solo film.
StarWars.com: As someone who’s obviously played such a part of writing the character over the years, had you — just in your head — kicked around ideas about what his origin might have been?
Lawrence Kasdan: No. Never. What happened is, in November 2012, I was in Colorado and Kathy [Kennedy] called me. She said “Look, we’re going to do some new Star Wars movies, and would you come up and talk to me and George about it?” I said, “I don’t know. I feel like I’ve done my Star Wars movies.” I had done two by then. She said, “Just come up. We’d really appreciate it and let’s have a talk.” I said, “All right.”........So that was in 1980. Now in 2012, he’s saying, “Will you come up and have a meeting.” With Kathy, who I had been friends with for 40 years, and so I went up and we talked and it was great to be back at the ranch. They said, “We want to do” — there’s no Disney in this conversation yet — and they said, “We want to revive the franchise and we’ve got some ideas.” And they had a bunch of ideas that George had written out very briefly. I said “Well, I don’t think so,” and they said Michael Arndt has been hired to write the next Star Wars. I said, “Well, that sounds great. He’s really talented.” And then they said, “You know, one of the ideas would be to do just a movie about Han,” and I suddenly perked up, because that was the only thing that interested me. I didn’t want to do a sequel. I wouldn’t have written the next one, normally. I just thought I had done it. But to do something with Han, who I found was the most interesting and fun character in the whole deal, and to be able to be free and make whatever kind of story I wanted about Han, well, that was irresistible to me. And I say, “Well, that does interest me.”
