Right now there are two movies planned in the Star Wars Story spinoff series: Gareth Edwards' Rogue One, which hits next month and details how the Rebels got ahold of the Death Star plans, and Phil Lord and Chris Miller's Han Solo, a look into the smuggler's youth due in 2018. However, back when Disney was first getting their their rebooted Star Wars franchise off the ground, there actually a third anthology film floating about.
Josh Trank was attached to direct a spinoff before Lord and Miller signed up for Han Solo, but in an unexpected turn left the project after about a year. There's been much debate about whether this was impacted at all by the disaster that was Fantastic Four - Trank's departure came just a month before that film bombed spectacularly - but an even greater topic of speculation has been what exactly he was working on for those months. It's widely expected it would have been a film focusing on Boba Fett, and a new report not only confirms that, but reveals it was painfully close to being announced.
According to an enlightening article from Entertainment Weekly on the future of Star Wars, a sizzle reel was prepped for 2015's Star Wars Celebration Anaheim to announce Trank's Boba Fett project, which was only pulled at the last minute when things began to go awry with the director. That same weekend The Force Awakens' second teaser debuted and Rogue One released a concept trailer, so fans weren't starved for excting footage, but can you imagine the cheers that would have met the sight of Slave 1 flying by or Fett jetpacking down on screen? Boba Fett is a firm fan-favourite that has long since outgrown his minimalist movie origins, appearing in a number of Star Wars books, games, comics and even TV shows, and a standalone adventure has long been anticipated.
It's worth noting that EW call the film "a Boba Fett/bounty hunter movie", meaning that while everyone's favourite Mandalorian would have featured, the story focus would have likely gone wider, raking in a wider team dynamic or exploring the culture of galactic bounty hunting. This would actually line up with a rumour from around the time of Trank's departure that Boba, Cad Bane and others would appear in Rogue One; it now seems there was some truth to that - the reports were just discussing the wrong movie.
The big question is when this would have been set. So far, the announced Star Wars Story films are all based just before the era of the original trilogy, and as canonically Boba died in the maw of the sarlacc in Return of the Jedi, this would have presumably also been around the same time. There is of course the possibility the film would have lifted from the Expanded Universe and have him escape, but otherwise it's a very tight period, which is a potentially worrying sign for a franchise that is supposed to be expanding. Of course, as the film never even got its test footage out, it's not worth drawing too many conclusions.
What we do know is that Trank's departure halted all development on the project - it was originally set for Han Solo's 2018 slot, but was pushed back and now lurks on the extremities of the slate. Whether it ever gets made is up in the air, although you can bet that now word of a teaser reel is out fans will be clamouring for a look at what might have been.
NEXT: Han Solo Spinoff is a 'Western'
Source: Entertainment Weekly
