Of all the great “Star Wars” characters and their histories, if there was one you could rank outside the canon, you might pick Boba Fett. While “Return Of The Jedi” did him no favors—goofily kicked to his doom with a pathetic wail into a Sarlacc pit by a blind Han Solo in a scene right out of the “Three Stooges” (it’s listed on YouTube by one user as “worst ‘Star Wars’ scene ever”)—somehow his integrity and mythos remained intact; that of the dangerous, mysterious bounty hunter that captivated audiences when he first appeared in “The Empire Strikes Back.”
But the much-maligned “Star Wars” prequels showed Fett to be a sniveling young boy, quickly orphaned when his father Jango Fett failed to impress as a warrior against Mace Windu (and lost his head in the process). I’m not sure why anyone would want to unveil the origins of such a character—their mystique and unknown qualities are what make them that alluring and badass in the first place—but a solo “Boba Fett” film is likely on the way.
In a recent AMC Movie Talk, director Jon Schnepp (“Metalocalypse”) mentioned that writer Lawrence Kasdan is writing the solo Fett movie. “One of them is Boba Fett,” Schnepp said of the rumored “Star Wars” spin-off movies. “It is. I know. I know for a fact. I will never reveal my source, but it is the one written by Lawrence Kasdan.”
Much of this isn’t exactly new. A solo Boba Fett movie has been rumored for a while (along with a young Han Solo film too). When Disney first bought Lucasfilm, the original plan was a “Star Wars” movie every other two years starting in 2015 with “Star Wars: Episode VII” and in the in-between years, 2016, 2018, 2020, etc., audiences would be treated with a “Star Wars” “stand alone” movies, later confirmed as “origin stories” for some of the more popular characters (Kasdan even said he wanted to “start fresh” with them).
Furthermore, Lawrence Kasdan (one of the co-writers on “Empire Strikes Back” and “Return Of The Jedi,” also co-writing ‘Episode VII’ with director J.J. Abrams), had already been hired, along with “X-Men” writer Simon Kinberg as part of the writing team that would help take the new “Star Wars” universe into a larger shared universe (in fact, Kasdan and Kinberg were originally rumored to be writing these spin-off/stand alone films in the first place).
So is Schnepp correct? Well, considering the wealth of evidence, it seems much less a revelation and much more of a given that Kasdan would be writing the Boba Fett movie (and possibly the Han Solo one too). The question remains. Is Kinberg writing one while Kasdan is writing the other? Are they working together? Do they each have their separate teams? And more importantly, while Kasdan may have been hired to write spin-off films originally, he’s now busy with Abrams to nail down and ensure that ‘Episode VII’ is a big success and sets off this new franchise on the right foot. Hell, we wouldn’t be surprised if 2016 doesn’t see a “Star Wars” spin-off film because it simply wouldn’t be ready yet, given that Kasdan has his plate full.
Then again, Abrams and Kathleen Kennedy already tried to delay ‘Episode VII’ a year and Disney said no, so perhaps, by hook or by crook, the mega-conglomerate will have these movies released in the year they demand them to be. Let’s just hope they don’t suffer too much by putting release date first, story second. Check out Schnepp’s comments below starting around the 4:10 mark.