Look out ’50 Shades’ and ‘Magic Mike’! Some real sexy is about to hit the big screen! Namely, a stand-alone ‘Jabba The Hutt’ movie. Yes, following the now-in-production ‘Han Solo’ film, Disney is in some stage of development on additional films that focus on individual members of the vast ‘Star Wars’ mythology, including Boba Fett, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda. Now comes word that the space version of ‘The Godfather’ (who is just slightly slimmer than Marlon Brando later in his career) might also get similar treatment.
This news comes from a write-up by Variety about the ‘Obi-Wan Kenobi’ movie and is just casually thrown out:
Disney is currently shooting an untitled origin tale of beloved smuggler Han Solo. Some of the other standalones in development include a Jabba the Hutt story and a Boba Fett movie.
Back in April, Guillermo del Toro said that he’d like to make a ‘Jabba’ movie, depicting the crime lord’s rise to power. Presumably, if this movie is in the works, it’s del Toro’s vision.
Jabba is a nasty customer to whom Han Solo owes a lot of money. A scene featuring the villain with Harrison Ford was shot for the first ‘Star Wars’ movie, ‘A New Hope’, but with a human actor portraying him. That scene didn’t make it into the final cut but was restored for the late 90s Special Edition re-release. In this version, CGI was used to replace the human actor (named Declan Mulholland, for the record) with a creature that looked more like the grotesque slug in ‘Return of the Jedi’.
It should be noted that since ‘A New Hope’ takes place a few years before ‘Jedi’, this Jabba is much smaller and able to slither around on his own. By the time he appeared in ‘Jedi’ he’d eaten a few too many alien frogs and was so rotund he appeared immobile. Presumably, like ‘Han Solo’, this will be a prequel and would focus on a smaller, younger Jabba.
In one of the most famous scenes in any ‘Star Wars’ film, in ‘The Empire Strikes Back’ Darth Vader ambushes the Rebels in Bespin, then freezes Han in Carbonite, allowing bounty hunter Boba Fett to take possession in order to collect the bounty that Jabba placed on his head.
As you probably know, Jabba doesn’t speak English. This is something that helped protect C-3PO who he kept around (and intact) in order to translate for him. American audiences rarely embrace foreign films. Does Disney really think The Force is so strong with fans that they will turn out for a movie spoken entirely in a fake alien language?
This is one of the weirder rumors I’ve heard. There is some room to explore the seedy, gangster fringe of the ‘Star Wars’ universe. It’s an element that has popped up many times in various films, but always as a side plot. Presumably, ‘Han Solo’ and ‘Boba Fett’ will be heavily seeped in this world, though and Jabba should have a presence in either or both of those movies.
We’ll just have to keep our eyes and ears open for any news that surfaces about this project.
Do you want to see a ‘Jabba the Hutt’ movie?
