Right now, the future of the Star Wars franchise is a bit unclear. J.J. Abrams' untitled Star Wars: Episode IX has entered production; and Logan's James Mangold has been hired to make an undated Boba Fett film, but nothing is really official beyond that. Sadly, we don't fully know what's going on behind closed doors at Lucasfilm -- but according to production designer Neil Lamont, one of the studio's upcoming-but-stopped projects included a return to the legendary fictional planet Tatooine. Lamont told me,
We were just starting our work on another Star Wars spin-off and yeah. We were actually just making our mark on Tatooine -- which would have been interesting and some other new galaxies. So hopefully, if that comes back, we'll get the chance to be able to do that further.
Neil Lamont's history with the Star Wars franchise dates back to being an assistant on the set of Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, and in the past couple years he's served as production designer on both Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, and Solo: A Star Wars Story. With that most recent title soon coming to home video, I had the opportunity to hop on the phone with him today and talk about his work -- and it was at the end of the interview that discussion turned to the future. Given his experience not only working on Star Wars, but also on Harry Potter and James Bond titles, I asked if there were specific fictional universes or locations he wanted to give his personal touch, and he brought up his almost-got-it moment with Luke and Anakin Skywalker's home planet in a developing spin-off.
There wasn't any elaboration on Neil Lamont's part regarding exactly what was in the works for Tatooine -- but we can certainly speculate. It's possible that there were some abandoned ideas for the desert planet in the upcoming Boba Fett movie... but given the status of things, the stronger bet is that Lamont is referencing the much-discussed Obi-wan Kenobi solo adventure. We've been hearing talk about that potential project for years, with the idea being that it would follow Kenobi (played by Ewan McGregor) in the years after the events of Revenge of the Sith. This would specifically place him on Tatooine -- where he stayed so that he could keep an eye on young Luke from a distance. Not much has been officially said about the potential film, but it's believable that there might have been discussions about what we might see from Tatooine.
We'll just have to wait and see if Neil Lamont gets the opportunity to build his vision of arguably the most famous planet in Star Wars -- but much sooner than that fans will be able to revisit his work inside the most famous vehicle in Star Wars: the Millennium Falcon. Solo: A Star Wars Story is scheduled to be available for digital download on September 14th, and physical copy fans will be able to pick up the 4K, Blu-ray or DVD on September 25th.
