Christian Bale Was Up for a Role in ‘Solo: A Star Wars Story’
A fun thing to do when you get bored is to look up all the actors who could have played Han Solo and Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia in the original Star Wars and imagine how different the world would be now. Kurt Russell? Sylvester Stallone? Jodie Foster? Sounds bizarre now, but we could have been living in a very different timeline. Plenty of actors were up for parts in Solo: A Star Wars Story, including none other than Christian Bale, who revealed that he was almost cast as Woody Harrelson’s mysterious mentor character in the movie.
During an appearance on Josh Horowitz’s Happy Sad Confused podcast, Bale revealed that he had talked to the producers about the role, and he’s interested in perhaps working with them on the series in the future.
Yes, [it was] very tempting. I not only love the films, going back to my childhood, but also have a very long relationship with Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall because they did Empire of the Sun many years back. There was discussion, [and] I hope there will be future discussions.
Bale didn’t specify exactly why he didn’t end up taking the role, or if it was even officially offered to him, but he sounds game to maybe appear in a future movie somewhere down the line. It’s possible that original directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller had too much of an unconstrained directing style that Bale, intense shapeshifter that he is, knew he wouldn’t thrive with, or maybe he just didn’t jive with the story or the character, but if a future movie or spinoff story is open to the idea, it sounds like Bale would be down. Who wouldn’t want to be in a Star Wars movie anyway?