Well, this is certainly a juicy week for Star Wars news. Following the revelation that a Yoda film could be in the pipeline, Entertainment Weekly has now reported that fan favourites Han Solo and Boba Fett are both set to star in their own spin-offs. Han Solo’s solo (ha!) adventure is currently planned for the nineteen-year gap between the end of Revenge of the Sith and the beginning of A New Hope, while Fett’s film could be set either between A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back or between Empire and Return of the Jedi. Either way, we’ll almost certainly be seeing some Vader.

Needless to say, the Star Wars Expanded Universe has both characters’ entire lives mapped out outside their appearance in the extant films. Han Solo, who is aged 29 when we first meet him in A New Hope, grew up in an Oliver Twist-style thieving crew and had various adventures including joining the Imperial Navy (he was thrown out for defending a helpless Wookie prisoner, one Chewbacca) and repeatedly losing and winning the Millennium Falcon in games of sabaac, whilst Boba Fett’s background has already been explored in Attack of the Clones and Revenge – he’s an unaltered clone of Jango (the D is silent) Fett, the genetic progenitor of the cloned Grand Army of the Republic. He’s also cradled the severed head of his ‘dad’ on a burnt-out Geonosian battlefield, a classic childhood ritual which will tend to set up plenty of neuroses for a fulfilling and cinematic later life…

Realistically, Boba Fett’s appearance in the Star Wars spin-offs was inevitable. He’s such a popular character that he was digitally added to the dreadful Special Edition of A New Hope as well as being shoved into the new trilogy, and there’s no way Lucasfilm or their new Disney paymasters would miss him out. We call one Fett cameo per Star Wars movie from now on, minimum. And not a fucking sniff of Dengar, everyone’s favourite Corellian swoop-racer turned partially-lobotomised mercenary. Sob…

How do you feel about Han and Boba’s new films? And, most importantly, who should play the young Solo? Let us know below!