When Disney bought Star Wars, they really had rights to all of it.  Even though the universe after The Return of the Jedi had been well-established through books known as the Expanded Universe, Disney essentially rebooted it with The Force Awakens.  Not only does Disney want to change the future of the original trilogy, but they also want to go into the past and write new Star Wars stories.  Particularly, they want to establish an "origin story" for one of Star Wars favorite characters of Han Solo, but one of the hardest tasks is to find a young actor to play the role made famous by Harrison Ford. 

According to Yahoo Movies, the search for the right actor to play the young Han Solo for a Star Wars movie has been going on for months.  There have been a lot of candidates like Miles Teller (Fantastic Four), Ansel Elgort (The Fault in Our Stars), Scott Eastwood (Fury), Blake Jenner (Glee), and it is believed that the front-runner is Alden Ehrenreich. Ehrenreich, who is now best known for a breakout role as a cowboy actor named Hobie Doyle in the Coen brothers' Hail, Ceasar!  Nothing has been confirmed, so essentially, this is a rumor. 

For those who don't know about this film, the young Han Solo film is one of several planned Star Wars Anthology films that will be essentially stand-alone Star Wars films, but still be a part of the Star Wars story.  It will kick off this holiday on December 16, 2016 with Star Wars: Rogue One, a story about how the Death Star plans were stolen.  This fits into Star Wars: A New Hope, and the story of how Han Solo became the great smuggler that he was could also fit in as well. 

This film is not the first attempt at telling the story of a young Han Solo.  From 1997-1998, where Star Wars novels were becoming very common before the release of Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menance, Bantem Spectra released three volumes of the Han Solo trilogy that included The Paradise Snare, The Hutt Gambit, and Rebel Dawn.  The books showed what the young smuggler was like before he eventually met up with Luke Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi in the Mos Eisley Cantina. 

Of course, the established canon of the Star Wars "Expanded Universe" books has been essentially rewritten since Disney took over, and even some of the prequel films have directly contradicted some of the "facts" about Boba Fett.  There is supposedly a Star Wars Anthology movie being planned about a young Boba Fett as well. 

The Young Han Solo film is planned for release into theaters on May 25, 2018.  It will be directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, who have already had hits with The Lego Movie and Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.  The film is written by Lawrence Kasdan, who wrote the screenplay for Episodes V, VI, and VII of the Star Wars films, not to mention Raiders of the Lost Ark.