It is hard to replace Harrison Ford as Han Solo in the "Star Wars" franchise, but screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan said that this is a must in their spinoff film since they will take the character back to his youth, when he first met Luke Skywalker and Obi Wan Kenobi as a smuggler.
"Who would you put in it?" Kasdan asked Vulture. "It's a really tough challenge."
According to Kasdan, they are not looking for someone who looks completely like Ford, but someone who can wield the same charisma and influence on the screen as him.
"You want someone who isn't going to be exactly like Harrison, you want someone who suggests him," he said. "It's like when you adapt a book, and I've adapted a couple: You don't want to adapt it word for word, you want the essence to come through. With Harrison, though, it's not easy to find someone with those kinds of qualities. He's like Spencer Tracy, and what does a young Spencer Tracy look like?"
When he was asked about the challenges of making "Star Wars: The Force Awakens," Kasdan said that it was coming up with new names. But he laughingly revealed that director "J.J.'s really good at it" since he came up with Kylo Ren and Poe Dameron, among many others.
"And I think he gets a lot of pleasure out of it!" added Kasdan. "You know, I've named a lot of characters and systems in this saga, and I think he was fresher at it. He did a lot of great ones."
Another challenge they faced in the seventh installment of the franchise was how to keep plot details under wraps. He said that it was very difficult because of the machinations of social media.
"Everything is different, and I don't even think of it so much as Twitter as it is the beast of the internet," said Kasdan. "The big thing is that you used to put out a trailer, and people would only see it if they went to the right movie. Now, you put out a picture and the entire world has it in five minutes! You put out a trailer, and there are 80 million views! A rumor or a spoiler can have 200 million views. That didn't exist in the past."
"It's incredibly painful in the world of keeping franchise secrets," he further said. "It's not incredibly painful in the world."
