No, Bob Iger Did Not Confirm Han Solo Or Boba Fett Spinoff Films

Posted by Eric on

Today, a rumor crossed my radar that immediately caught my attention. The headline on the story, which comes from Nuke The Fridge, is "STAR WARS: HAN SOLO and BOBA FETT 'Origin Movies' Confirmed." The original report (link unavailable -- see below) led with this interesting claim:



As reported earlier by Nuke The Fridge.com, it was said that origin stories (meaning character spin-off movies) where being talked about around Disney & Lucasfilm, now Disney CEO Bob Iger is confirming that Han Solo & Boba Fett spin-offs are already in the works.

Obviously, Bob Iger has not confirmed that the two planned spinoff films are about Boba Fett and Han Solo. We would have reported it here as soon as he said it. Nuke The Fridge's story cited Moviegoss.com, Movieweb.com, and, interestingly, us here at TheForce.Net, but none of these references to other sites were accompanied by links to their reports. So why had NTF writer Chris Salce claimed that Iger had confirmed these two spinoff movies?I reached out to Nuke The Fridge and spoke to one of their writers, Luis Lecca. He said that he would get in touch with Chris and find out what his sources were. When I followed up by email, Luis responded, "Here's [sic] are the link the contributor sent us as sources." He then linked to a MovieWeb report and a StarWars.com post announcing the spinoffs . Nowhere on either of those pages (or anywhere else) did Mr. Iger confirm anything substantive about the spinoff movies, other than the fact that Lawrence Kasdan and Simon Kinberg are writing them When I went to reply to Luis' email to point this out, I noticed that Nuke The Fridge's story had been updated. It now reads, "Disney CEO Bob Iger has confirmed the writers for the movies and it looks like they will be based on HAN SOLO and BOBA FETT." At least now they aren't claiming that Bob Iger confirmed anything beyond the films' writers.The error seems to have stemmed from the MovieWeb story that Nuke The Fridge referenced, in which MovieWeb's B. Alan Orange wrote that "an inside source at Disney and Lucasfilm is confirming that both a Boba Fett movie and a Han Solo movie are in the works."MovieWeb's source was, of course, anonymous, and no such confirmation has been made. Indeed, it's important to remember that, whatever MovieWeb and other sites think the word "confirmed" means, what itmeans is that. Until then, it's all just rumors.The original, erroneous version of Nuke The Fridge's story has disappeared from the Internet, but you can view a full-page screenshot of it here