Although Star Wars fans all over the globe are excitedly anticipating the release of the new Han Solo standalone movie, Solo: A Star Wars Story, there’s at least one man who might have good reason to feel resentful about it. Namely, French artist Hachim Bahous, who pointed out on Facebook this week just how strikingly similar the latest batch of Solo character-themed posters look to a set of album covers he designed in 2015.
Three years ago, Bahous designed a series of crisp, eye-catching covers for some Sony-produced music anthologies, and as is plain for anyone to see, they look a lot like the new Solo posters. Each of the four posters released by Disney shows one of the film’s main characters―Solo himself, Lando, Chewie, and Qi’ra―with a distinct color theme, and each one more or less matches the color and styles of Bahous’ works.
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“I am flattered that the quality of my work is recognized, but it’s still pure forgery,” Bahous wrote (with translation from French provided by Google). “I was not asked my authorization, I want to be credited and paid for this work that I did for Sony!”
Disney has not publicly addressed the allegations and criticisms. The release of Solo figures to be a big event for the studio—and for fans of the Star Wars franchise—with iconic characters Han and Lando portrayed by Alden Ehrenreich and Donald Glover respectively, and a new character named Qi’ra being portrayed by Emilia Clarke. Not a ton is known about Clarke’s character just yet, and we don’t know who the antagonist of the film will be.
It hasn’t been a totally smooth or worry-free production. Notably, the film’s original directors, Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, were removed from the project and replaced by Hollywood mainstay Ron Howard. It’s slated to be released May 25.
