Fleabag’s Phoebe Waller-Bridge set for Han Solo spin-off movie

Phoebe Waller-Bridge made a name for her­self in the bril­liant­ly provoca­tive BBC com­e­dy series from 2016, Fleabag, which she wrote and starred in. Now she looks set for a move into the main­stream, with reports sug­gest­ing that she is in talks to appear in the upcom­ing Han Solo spin-off movie, star­ring Alden Ehren­re­ich in the lead role. Accord­ing to Vari­ety:

“The role would be a CGI-dri­ven per­for­mance from Waller-Bridge but would still be a sig­nif­i­cant part of the ensem­ble, sim­i­lar­ly to key Star Wars char­ac­ters in the past like Chew­bac­ca, C‑3P0 and most recent­ly, Alan Tudyk’s K‑2SO in Rogue One.”

It’s a wel­come if some­what left­field cast­ing choice, but then per­haps direc­tors Phil Lord and Christo­pher Miller (the guys behind The Lego Movie and 22 Jump Street) are hop­ing that the come­di­an will bring a cyn­i­cal edge to the film with her trade­mark brand of scathing humour. She’ll be join­ing a crack­ing cast, with Don­ald Glover, Woody Har­rel­son and Emil­ia Clarke already con­firmed in sup­port­ing roles.

The film, which has been giv­en the work­ing title ​‘Red Cup’ will be anoth­er unof­fi­cial, stand­alone pre­quel to the Star Wars saga, in the vein of Gareth Edwards’ huge­ly suc­cess­ful Rogue One. Plot details are being kept close­ly under wraps, but it’s already being billed as an ori­gin sto­ry about the lov­able space-pirate, Han Solo, and his faith­ful Wook­ie com­pan­ion, Chewbacca.

Pro­duc­tion began last month and the film is cur­rent­ly sched­uled for a spring 2018 release. Before then, we can look for­ward to see Waller-Bridge along­side Mar­got Rob­bie and Domh­nall Glee­son in Simon Cur­tis’ as yet unti­tled biopic of Win­nie-the-Pooh author AA Milne.