【Chris Cassidy Archives】

Now we finally have Chris Cassidy ArchivesThe Last Jeditrailer, which screens Monday night, the most important "when" question remaining in the Star Wars movie universe is: When will the untitled Han Solo movie finally be in the can?

Whatever else you may say about the legendary director Ron Howard, who is pinch-hitting on this project, it's hard to claim that his refurbished production of the Solo movie is traveling at point five past lightspeed.

Largely ignored, under cover of Howard's genuinely charming (and largely spoiler-free) social media posts from the set, is the fact that it's now more than seven expensive weeks past the movie's previous internal deadline for finishing reshoots.

SEE ALSO: Ron Howard drops biggest hint yet that the Han Solo movie could answer an infamous question

That may not set sirens wailing at deep-pocketed Disney just yet. Howard is one of the safest pair of hands in the business -- and if the footage Lord and Miller left behind was comedic improvisation to the point of being unusable, there's no alternative but to let the maestro stay in residence at Pinewood Studios in London as long as he requires.

But his time in residence may almost be up.

On Saturday, Mashablehas learned from sources close to the production, the untitled Han Solo production had a wrap party -- with Ron Howard and Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy in attendance. On Facebook, one attendee -- stunt actor Luke Scott -- described the party as "slightly premature" and indicated that he still had one "last week" of work.

Meanwhile, Howard tweeted in a response to a fan late Sunday that he was "almost" finished with shooting and into the post-production phase.

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That ambiguity still leaves "when will Ron be done?" as the hottest question surrounding the film. (Closely followed by "When will we actually see an actual photo of Alden Ehrenreich dressed as Han Solo?" "When will we see a trailer?" and "Will the film seriouslyhit its May 25, 2018 release date?")

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The movie began shooting at Pinewood in February. Howard flew to London June 26. He was the old hand replacing Phil Lord and Chris Miller; the pair had clashed with Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy and legendary writer Lawrence Kasdan (who co-wrote the movie with his son Jon) in a rather entitled fashion.

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When Howard arrived, now 16 weeks ago, there were four more weeks of shooting in the schedule. Five weeks had been budgeted for reshoots -- an industry-standard insurance policy that comes with every big movie, and has been doing a lot of heavy lifting in Disney's version of Star Wars.

But Howard's gone past the "reshoots" schedule by seven weeks; if this keeps going through late October, he'll have had more time at the helm of the Han Solo movie than Lord & Miller did before they were fired.

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From another point of view, the shooting and reshooting seem to have blurred into one.

The variety of shots and scenes we're seeing through Howard's busy smartphone lens may not add up to a whole bunch of spoilers. But they do add up to suggest a movie that is undergoing major surgery on its former form, if not a total branch-and-root reshoot.

(We reached out to Lucasfilm for comment on all this, and not surprisingly, no answer was forthcoming.)

SEE ALSO: Everything We Know About the Han Solo Movie

There is evidence to suggest we're at the tail end of the process. Howard reached a point three weeks ago where making a shot list became important -- the kind of thing you do when you're looking to tidy up a scene with what is more regularly thought of as reshoots. The director cutely asked Twitter for suggestions:

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There are other signs that the production is ramping down, and Howard has taken the unusual step of announcing when particular actors are finished with the shoot.

First, on August 26, Howard announced he was done with Donald Glover, aka young Lando Calrissian:

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Then there was Paul Bettany, who stepped in to play a role originally belonging to The Wirestar Michael K. Williams. Williams was unable to do reshoots due to a scheduling conflict, with no hard feelings involved.

The scheduling conflict would have resolved itself in November, suggesting that if Howard takes much longer to wrap, he could have used Williams after all.

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Most recently the Pinewood crew bid farewell to the Khaleesi herself. Emilia Clarke is reportedly playing a character named Kira (who some fan theorists claim is Rey's mother, since that was the fake name used for Rey's character during the Force Awakenscasting call).

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Two weeks later, there has been no further announced departure of actors from the set.

Notably missing from the wrap-up list? Woody Harrelson, who plays Han's criminal underworld mentor figure Beckett, and of course Alden Ehrenreich himself.

Howard has never mentioned his main star, and the one photo he may have posted of Young Han -- below -- may not even be him.

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All this time Ron is spending with Alden, and the fact that he isn't talking about it, doesn't by itself suggest it's time to panic about the movie's all-important lead role just yet.

At the same time, it's really hard not to recall this scene from Ehrenreich's breakout hit, Hail Caesar!-- in which his cheery cowboy character flounders in a larger studio production with a serious director.

Will Ehrenreich nail his portrayal of this iconic character to Howard's satisfaction? Ah, would that it were so simple.

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Topics Star Wars