Harrison Ford is open to the idea of bringing Han Solo back

Image Credit: Lucasfilm

Harrison Ford is open to the idea of bringing Han Solo back to life on the silver screen in 2015, according to sources close to the just-announced Star Wars sequel, but don’t be surprised if his contract includes a mandatory death scene for the sly old space smuggler.

“Harrison is open to the idea of doing the movie and he’s upbeat about it, all three of them are,” said one highly placed source, referring to Ford, Mark Hamill, and Carrie Fisher, the trio that made a hyper-speed jump to global fame on May 25, 1977, the opening night for George Lucas’s original Star Wars film.

The Hollywood trajectories of Hamill and Fisher led to reinvention — he’s now an in-demand voice actor; she used a gift for acerbic memoir to deliver Postcards from the Edge and Wishful Drinking. But Ford, who reached his 35th birthday in the summer of 1977, launched himself on a truly historic career run that synced up with the blockbuster bonanza of the 1980s. Ford’s star rose with The Fugitive, Air Force One, Clear and Present Danger, Presumed Innocent, Blade Runner, and of course, the four fedora films as a certain archaeologist named Henry “Indiana” Jones.

The actor, now 70, is plenty proud of Indy, Jack Ryan, John Book, and Dr. Richard Kimble but in the past he didn’t disguise his disdain for Solo. “As a character he was not so interesting to me,” the frosty Ford explained in an ABC interview in 2010.

The slippery Corellian pilot’s great talent is keeping himself alive, a skill that apparently extended beyond the screen. Solo’s death scene in early outlines for Episode VI: Return of the Jedi was scrapped, according to Ford and others, because the character was a top seller as an action figure.