SCENES for the new blockbuster Star Wars film are currently being shot in Hampshire.

Production crews and actors working on the Star Wars spin off, which has the working title Red Cup, have been filming at Fawley Power Station.

The film makers have kept tight-lipped about the location and the plot of the big budget movie, which stars Alden Ehrenreich as a young Han Solo as well as Emilia Clarke, Donald Glover and Woody Harrelson.

But locals have welcomed the filming, which comes two years after Mission Impossible 5 was partly shot at the same location.

Fawley resident Mike Cooper said: “I think it’s absolutely brilliant.

“You see lots of expensive cars with dark tinted windows driving down in the morning, like you did when Mission Impossible was being filmed. You know that there is someone famous in there.

“I go to the fields where my horses are and I can see all of the marquees and people rushing around trying to get things into the building; it is all very exciting.”

After Disney bought Lucasfilm in 2012, it announced plans to make a number of spin-offs and standalone films set within the Star Wars universe.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, released last year, was the first film under the new arrangement, and Red Cup, which is centred on Han Solo, will be the second.

Phil Lord and Chris Miller, who directed the animation The Lego Movie and 22 Jump Street, will be directing the new movie.

Few details of the scenes to be shot at Fawley have been released, but a port sequence will be filmed this week.

“It is really great to see the old building being used, especially for something as huge as Star Wars,” added Mr Cooper.

The film is scheduled to be released in May 2018.