Star Wars reimagining officially casts Apple TV+ favourite as the new Han Solo

If you grew up anywhere near a TV, it's nearly impossible to imagine the world without Star Wars buzzing around. It's everywhere—films, shows, lunchboxes, you name it. But the film that kicked it all off, the original 1977 Star Wars (the one that later got saddled with the subtitle A New Hope), didn't exactly look destined for global domination at the time. George Lucas and his crew could probably fill a book with production nightmares, and plenty of people on set weren't sure what on earth they were making—especially the local British teams roped in thanks to the decision to shoot most interiors at Elstree Studios in Hertfordshire.

Mark Hamill’s talked about this before—how the British crew was equal parts confused and bemused by Lucas’s space opera vision. Still, while it took a bit for the film to go nuclear worldwide, well… here we are, almost fifty years and several billion dollars later, with Star Wars recognised everywhere from Arizona to Azerbaijan, and yes, all across Britain too.

May the Force be with S4C

Fast-forward to present day, and as Star Wars approaches its 50th anniversary, the BBC has confirmed a little surprise for fans in Wales: the original film is getting an honest-to-goodness Welsh dub, set to air on S4C. Yes, after being dubbed into more than 50 languages over the years—including Navajo back in 2013 for its first ever Native American language release—now it's the turn of Gobaith Newydd, or "New Hope" if you don't speak Welsh.

Wales has such a rich history of storytelling and a beautiful lyrical language. We have never before had a translation of Star Wars into Welsh and I am so thankful that in celebration of our 50th anniversary, we have been able to work with some incredible Welsh talent to make that a reality. Welsh speakers will finally be able to enjoy the film in our native language and my hope is that it will have the same emotional impact as if you were watching the film again for the first time.

That’s Lynwen Brennan, co-president at Lucasfilm and a native of Wales, explaining the thinking behind the project. It’s not just a matter of swapping words either—they’re tweaking bits of the script so the characters actually sound Welsh, not just like the Millennium Falcon’s sat nav glitched out halfway to Llangollen.

The New Hope Cast, Welsh-style

The cast for this new dub isn’t too shabby, to put it mildly. We’ve got:

• Matthew Rhys (Widow’s Bay, The Americans) stepping in as Han Solo
• Rhys Ifans (from Notting Hill to Spider-Man to who-knows-what-next) as Obi-Wan Kenobi
• Aimee-Ffion Edwards (Slow Horses, Peaky Blinders) voicing Princess Leia
• Mark Lewis Jones (he was in Star Wars: The Last Jedi, so he’s done this galaxy before) taking on Darth Vader
• Osian Morgan as Luke Skywalker

Star Wars: Gobaith Newydd is expected to debut on S4C on Christmas Day.