Director Ron Howard has confirmed that Avengers star Paul Bettany has been added to the cast off the Untitled Han Solo Movie, which is due out next year. The casting of the British actor continues his rise to prominence in big name movies following his transition from the voice of J.A.R.V.I.S. in Iron Man to the Infinity Stone-powered Vision at the end of Avengers: Age of Ultron.
Ron Howard’s Paul Bettany casting tweet:
The Outer Rim just got a little bit wilder #PaulBettany #ForceFriday pic.twitter.com/KzuAwhcIXy
— Ron Howard (@RealRonHoward) September 1, 2017
The British actor’s filmography goes back to the 1990s, but it wasn’t really until A Knights Tale in 2001 that he really landed on the movie scene. He followed it up with roles in Ron Howard films, A Beautiful Mind, Master And Commander, and The Da Vinci Code, throughout the 2000s before taking on the computerised voice of J.A.R.V.I.S in Iron Man in 2008.
He reprised the role for both Iron Man 2 and Iron Man 3, along with The Avengers in 2012, before getting his red-faced transformation to Vision in Age Of Ultron in 2015. He also had a brief part in British gangster biopic Legend in 2015, but his casting in the Untitled Han Solo Movie is his biggest film part outside of the Marvel Cinematic Universe in recent years.
There are no details about the part that he is going to play in the film as of yet, but it won’t take long for things to start the surface and we’ll be surprised if a trailer featuring Paul Bettany isn’t out in the not too distant future. The film itself has been shrouded in secrecy for a while now with little known about the full plot setup apart from the fact that it will be a Han Solo origin film.
Alden Ehrenreich has been cast as Han Solo, the wheeler-dealer galactic smuggler that we all know and love from the original Star Wars films and The Force Awakens. He’ll have a younger Chewbacca along for the wild space ride in a story that will take place long ago, in a galaxy far far away and some time between the threequals and Star Wars: A New Hope.
The cast also includes Woody Harrelson (War For The Planet Of The Apes), Emilia Clarke (Terminator Genysis) and Thandie Newton (Westworld), along with Donald Glover (Spider-Man: Homecoming) as a young Lando Calrissian. Paul Bettany is the second notable British actor to be cast in the Han Solo film, adding to Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who was announced early on in the project. The Fleabag star has had a big year following the success of her break-out comedy debut with the recent announcement of Fleabag Series 2 and her first US show, thriller Killing Eve.
The Untitled Han Solo Movie has a release date scheduled for the 25th May 2018 in the US, with a similar timeline for the UK. It follows up on the success of the first Star Wars anthology film Rogue One and with The Last Jedi due out in December 2017, there’s a lot for fans of the epic sci-fi series to look forward to.
