50 Fun Facts About Solo: a Star Wars Story

In Solo: A Star Wars Story, who is the 'beast' Han is thrown into a pit to fight?

Chewbacca is the starved 'beast' in the pit, but Han speaks enough of his language to win him over, and the pair fake a fight to bring down a support pillar and escape together.

Which veteran Star Wars screenwriter co-wrote Solo: A Star Wars Story with his son Jonathan?

Lawrence Kasdan, who co-wrote The Empire Strikes Back, says he was unsure about doing more Star Wars until he was offered a film about Han, his favourite character.

Which directing duo was fired from Solo: A Star Wars Story in June 2017?

Phil Lord and Christopher Miller encouraged improvisation, while the film's veteran co-writer wanted the script shot as written. They later took executive producer credits instead.

Solo opened five months after which other Star Wars film?

The Last Jedi came first, and Disney chief Bob Iger later took the blame for the schedule, calling the pace of Star Wars releases a little too much, too fast.

Who plays Han in Solo: A Star Wars Story?

Alden Ehrenreich was the very first of about 3,000 actors to audition, and the directors saw the rest of the field around the world before coming back to him.

Who plays Lando Calrissian in Solo: A Star Wars Story?

Donald Glover's Lando 'outshone and outswaggered' the title character, USA Today wrote, while TheWrap's critic called him the Cary Grant of outer space.

Which Game of Thrones star plays Han's childhood friend Qi'ra?

Emilia Clarke, Daenerys in Game of Thrones, plays a Qi'ra who ends the film by killing her gangster boss and flying off in his yacht instead of leaving with Han.

Who plays Tobias Beckett in Solo: A Star Wars Story?

Woody Harrelson, already a screen mentor to Katniss in The Hunger Games, plays a thief who tells Han to assume everyone will betray him, and then proves the point himself.

Who plays L3-37 in Solo: A Star Wars Story?

Phoebe Waller-Bridge performed on set in a practical droid suit, and she was then digitally erased from every shot, with wiring and machine parts filling the gaps.

Who plays the crime boss Dryden Vos in Solo: A Star Wars Story?

Paul Bettany says he texted the director to ask why he wasn't in Star Wars yet. The reply was 'LOL, give me a week or so', and two weeks later he was flying to London.

Which actor's Dryden Vos was cut from Solo: A Star Wars Story in reshoots?

Michael K. Williams had played Vos as an alien he described as half mountain lion, half human, but he was filming in Africa when the reshoots came, so the part was recast and redesigned.

Han and Qi'ra grow up on which planet in Solo: A Star Wars Story?

Corellia is a faded shipbuilding world where runaways thieve for a gang boss in return for shelter, and Han bribes his way off it with a vial of starship fuel, only for Qi'ra to be caught at the gate.

In Solo: A Star Wars Story, which starship fuel is the prize in both heists?

Coaxium is hyperfuel so unstable that it explodes if jostled or overheated, which is why the raw haul from the second heist has to be raced to a refinery before it blows.

In Solo: A Star Wars Story, on which muddy battlefield planet does Han first meet Beckett's crew?

Mimban is a mud-soaked war zone where Han spots that Beckett's gang are thieves disguised as soldiers, tries to blackmail his way aboard, and is thrown to 'the beast' for his trouble.

In Solo: A Star Wars Story, what becomes of L3-37's navigational brain once she is fatally shot?

Uploaded into the Falcon, her maps steer the ship out of danger, and the writers meant it to explain C-3PO's complaint in The Empire Strikes Back that the ship speaks a most peculiar dialect.

Dryden Vos fronts which gang in Solo: A Star Wars Story?

Crimson Dawn does its business from Vos's yacht, the First Light, and by the time Han finds Qi'ra aboard she has risen to be the gangster's most trusted lieutenant.

In Solo: A Star Wars Story, the crew steals fuel from which planet's mines?

Kessel is the mining world behind Han's oldest boast, and the film stages the Kessel Run itself, a desperate shortcut through an uncharted storm to slip a blockade.

In Solo: A Star Wars Story, Han killing Beckett mid-sentence deliberately echoes which moment from the 1977 original?

Han shooting Greedo first was the point: the script's own stage direction insisted there could be no question that Han shoots first, the writers' answer to a fan row that began with the 1997 re-edit.

In Solo: A Star Wars Story, which lucky charm does Han hang in his speeder, then give to Qi'ra?

A pair of gold dice goes from Han's speeder to Qi'ra's hand and back again, and the same charm can be glimpsed hanging in the Falcon's cockpit in the 1977 original.

Who voices Maul in Solo: A Star Wars Story?

Sam Witwer had voiced Maul for years in the animated series The Clone Wars and Rebels, so his voice was laid over Ray Park, back in the horns almost two decades after first playing the part.

In Solo: A Star Wars Story, Maul summons Qi'ra to which planet?

Dathomir is Maul's homeworld, and the summons is a promotion: having pinned the failed job on Beckett, Qi'ra steps into her dead boss's place and is told she will be working closely with Maul from now on.

In Solo: A Star Wars Story, Han gets his surname on joining what?

The Imperial Navy recruiting officer needs a surname for the form, and because Han has no family to name, the officer simply enters him as 'Solo'.

In Solo: A Star Wars Story, where does the battered Falcon land to refine the fuel?

Savareen is a desert world with an abandoned refinery on its coast, and it is there that Lando takes off in the Falcon as marauders close in, leaving the rest of the crew stranded.

In Solo: A Star Wars Story, on which snowy planet does the train heist fail?

Vandor is where it all goes wrong: rival marauders swoop in for the same cargo, the fuel is destroyed, and Beckett loses both his partner Val and his pilot Rio in the chaos.

Which literary rogue inspired Solo: A Star Wars Story's Tobias Beckett?

Long John Silver was the model, the writers say: they reread Treasure Island to shape an old outlaw chasing one last big score who takes a boy under his wing, as Silver does young Jim Hawkins.

Under which working title did Solo: A Star Wars Story begin filming at Pinewood?

Star Wars: Red Cup was on the clapperboard that one of the directors posted on the first day, a joke on the red Solo cups that are a party staple across the United States.

Which actor, a fixture of every Skywalker saga film, cameos in Solo: A Star Wars Story as a human slave?

Anthony Daniels plays Tak, one of the slaves freed during the second heist, because C-3PO has no part in the story. It was the first Star Wars film in which he did not play the droid.

Which Italian mountain range hosted filming for Solo: A Star Wars Story in May 2017?

The Dolomites stood in for the film's snowy alien mountains during about a week of filming, with the crew based in the ski town of Misurina.

Which island group also hosted filming in May 2017?

Rogue One and The Last Jedi also used Spanish and Atlantic island locations.

Why did Solo: A Star Wars Story cost over $250 million?

Most of it was filmed twice: the original directors were fired months into the shoot and their replacement redid about 70 percent of the film, stretching a schedule due to end in July into October.

Solo was the first Star Wars film to do what?

Lose money in cinemas: Disney had turned a big-screen profit on each of its three earlier Star Wars films, but Solo stalled near $393 million worldwide against a budget of at least $250 million.

Who scored Solo: A Star Wars Story?

John Powell, of the Bourne films and How to Train Your Dragon, started once he had finished the animated Ferdinand and threaded two Han melodies by the saga's original composer through a two-hour score.

Which new theme did John Williams write for Solo: A Star Wars Story?

The Adventures of Han opens the soundtrack album and was stitched together from two shorter pieces, a heroic tune and a searching one, which then run all through the rest of the score.

Who voices the pilot Rio Durant in Solo: A Star Wars Story?

Jon Favreau recorded the part the year before his series The Mandalorian began, and it was not his first Star Wars voice: he had played Pre Vizsla, leader of the Mandalorian Death Watch, in The Clone Wars.

Who voices gang boss Lady Proxima in Solo: A Star Wars Story?

Linda Hunt won her Oscar for playing a man, the photographer Billy Kwan in The Year of Living Dangerously, and later became Hetty on NCIS: Los Angeles.

Who was Solo: A Star Wars Story's cinematographer?

Bradford Young favours low light, so cinemas with dim projectors showed a murky picture, and viewers complained that the film was too dark to see.

Solo: A Star Wars Story's replacement director acted in which George Lucas film?

American Graffiti, Lucas's 1973 breakout, gave him a lead role beside an up-and-coming Harrison Ford, and Lucas later hired him again, this time to direct the 1988 fantasy Willow.

Which Star Wars film had Solo: A Star Wars Story's replacement director once declined?

The Phantom Menace came his way after Lucas had spoken to Robert Zemeckis and Steven Spielberg, he says, and all three told Lucas to direct it himself. He called the job an honour that would have been too daunting.

In Solo: A Star Wars Story, the director's brother Clint cameos as the boss of what?

A droid fighting pit is his racket, until the droid-rights firebrand L3 storms in to stop the bouts and grabs him by the face. Clint has turned up in many of his brother's films, from Splash to Apollo 13.

In Solo: A Star Wars Story, Warwick Davis reprises which Episode I bit part?

Weazel was a gambler cheering on the podrace beside Watto in 1999, and the cameo reunited Davis with the man who had directed him in Willow thirty years earlier.

Solo: A Star Wars Story opened in the US over which holiday weekend?

Memorial Day weekend brought just $84.4 million in three days, and the four-day holiday total fell well below the studio's estimates and far short of the record that early tracking had pointed to.

The expanded novelization of Solo: A Star Wars Story adds an epilogue that ties the story to which other film?

Rogue One's rebel Saw Gerrera and his young ward Jyn Erso receive the stolen fuel from the marauders in Mur Lafferty's epilogue, and she says she first pictured Bail Organa and a young Leia in the scene.

Solo: A Star Wars Story's Lando actor imagined a spin-off as which film in space?

Catch Me If You Can came to mind, he told Screen Rant before the release, because Lando is so charismatic that people simply hand him things, and it would be funny and cool to see how far that goes.

Fans of Solo: A Star Wars Story campaigned for a sequel under which hashtag?

#MakeSolo2Happen trended on the film's first anniversary in 2019 and went viral again on its second, and one of the writers replied that he was beyond grateful and galvanized by the energy.

Which actor held early talks to play Tobias Beckett in Solo: A Star Wars Story?

Christian Bale confirmed the talks on a podcast and called the part very tempting: he says he has loved the films since childhood and has known producer Kathleen Kennedy since she made Empire of the Sun.

In Solo: A Star Wars Story, what fills the famous gap in the nose of Lando's pristine Millennium Falcon?

An escape pod sits there until Han jettisons it in mid-flight, leaving the forked nose of the original films. Designer James Clyne says he had wondered since playing with the toy as a boy whether something belonged in that gap.

Which famous saga line does Han flip in Solo: A Star Wars Story?

I have a bad feeling about this is the saga's running line, heard in film after film, and the young Han, never short of confidence, announces that he has a good feeling about this instead.

In Solo: A Star Wars Story, how does Han win his rematch with Lando?

He stole the hidden card Lando kept up his sleeve, the trick that had cost Han their first game, so the gambler cannot cheat in the rematch and the Millennium Falcon changes hands.

For which Academy Award was Solo: A Star Wars Story nominated?

Best Visual Effects: the team wrapped a 180-degree screen around the Falcon cockpit and projected hyperspace live, so the jump reflected in Han's eyes was filmed in camera, not added later.

Who plays the masked Cloud Rider leader in Solo: A Star Wars Story?

Erin Kellyman says she thought she had messed up the first of her three auditions, which ended with stunt tests and a screen test with the film's Han. She later played Karli Morgenthau in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.