The iconic Star Wars character Han Solo is to be the subject of the second standalone Star Wars spin-off movie.

The Disney-owned studio Lucasfilm has already announced plans for its first standalone film, Star Wars: Rogue One, which will be released internationally in 2016.

David Prowse as Darth Vader in The Empire Strikes Back (left); Chewbacca (Peter Mayhew) and Han Solo (Harrison Ford) unload (right).

The film, which does not yet have a title, will focus on a young Han Solo, at the beginning of his career as a smuggler.

When film audiences met in him in 1977's Star Wars, he was an established smuggler whose claim to fame was that his ship, the Millennium Falcon, could "make the Kessel run in 12 parsecs".