When the filmmakers for the Star Wars origin story, Solo were getting ready to make the film, there was a concerted effort to include famed bounty hunter Boba Fett. However, they were repeatedly rebuffed from using one of the most popular Star Wars villains and were told he was “off-limits” because he was being used in another project.
It turns out that the biggest reason the Solo movie wasn’t able to use the popular character is that at the time, a stand-alone Boba Fett movie was in the works. Fantastic Four director Josh Trank was helming that project and it was planned to dive deeper into the origin of the bounty hunter. However, in the end, that film was never made and the Star Wars fandom had to wait a bit longer to see the character return to their screens.
Solo screenwriter Jonathan Kasdan recently spoke to the New York Times about why they couldn’t use Boba Fett in their movie, making it clear that Lucasfilm had dubbed the character “always off-limits.” While he was expected to be used elsewhere, it appears that the lack of success of Solo changed up the company’s plans for the character, deciding instead to reintroduce him on Disney Plus.
At the time, there was speculation that a great deal of the story of Solo would feature his arch-nemesis in Boba Fett. However, in part, because the character was not allowed to appear in the movie, the story featured a longer look at the seedy underbelly of the Star Wars universe while introducing new characters.
The re-inclusion of characters like Obi-Wan Kenobi and Boba Fett were instead decided to be introduced on the streaming service when Solo didn’t take off the way Lucasfilm thought it would. Now the famous Jedi is getting his own show in 2022 and The Book of Boba Fett debuts later this week.
Much like Solo would likely have done on the big screen, it’s thought that The Book of Boba Fett will go into more detail about what exactly the famed bounty hunter was doing before the original trilogy while also going into more detail about what he’s been doing since Return of the Jedi. By exploring some of Star Wars’ missing history, the show could also fill in the gap on some of the other well-known characters that haven’t gotten a great deal of fleshing out. There will also be a bit more fleshing out of the galaxies’ underworld as Boba Fett and Fennec Shand take over Jabba the Hut’s empire.
Source: The New York Times
