Solo: A Star Wars Story Official Runtime Revealed

Via Screenrant.com:

The official runtime for Solo: A Star Wars Story has seemingly been confirmed. Just five short months after experiencing The Last Jedi, audiences will return to the galaxy far, far away to witness the early smuggling adventures of Han Solo and Chewbacca. It’s no secret the project took quite the unusual path to the big screen, but things seem to have settled down nicely now that Lucasfilm is in the thick of Solo marketing. A recently-released trailer did a good job of establishing the tone and style, winning some of the skeptics over.

Director Ron Howard has been putting the finishing touches on post-production, locking his edit of the prequel a couple weeks ago. Solo will be finished in time for its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in May, where it will screen out of competition. With all that in mind, it stood reason to believe there was a final runtime in place, and it indeed appears that is the case.

The official Cannes Festival website (hat tip Star Wars News Net) has a listing of all the titles that will play, and it’s stated there Solo is 2 hours, 15 minutes. Screen Rant has reached out to Disney for confirmation and will update this post accordingly.

Clocking in at 135 minutes, Solo is set to be as long as The Force Awakens and just slightly longer than Rogue One. That should be ample time to sufficiently handle everything that’s on its plate. While the premise of a Han Solo origin story sounds simple on-paper, it’s becoming clearer the scope of the anthology is comparable to one of the saga films. Viewers will visit several different locations across a story that spans six years, following Han from ages 18-24. Among the many elements to the narrative are Han meeting Chewie, crossing paths with Lando Calrissian, winning the Millennium Falcon, and taking part in a heist to rob the Conveyex vehicle. There’s a lot for Solo to unpack, so it’s nice to see Lucasfilm isn’t skimping on the runtime. Of course, the hope is Howard and his team made efficient use of that time and kept Solo moving at a decent pace.

At this stage, the only thing that remains to be seen is whether or not Solo is of high quality and is a worthy addition to the franchise. Even before the infamous production problems made headlines, there were concerns about the prequel simply judging by its concept. For a while, Solo has had the cards stacked against it, but the conversation is beginning to trend in a more positive direction. Ideally, Solo will earn strong reviews out of Cannes and perform well at the box office to become another winner for Lucasfilm.