First major on-screen appearance of the Cantwell-class Arrestor Cruiser, the ship's design, based off a World War II aircraft carrier, was first created by visual effects artist
Colin Cantwell as one of the potential designs for the Imperial Star Destroyer in
Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977), though it ultimately was not used. 40 years later the production crew for
Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018) looked through Lucasfilm archives for ship design ideas and came across this design and decided to use it for an Imperial ship in the film, though it only wound up being used in a short Imperial recruitment video. The name for the ship, Cantwell-class, was first used in the novelization of the film when it almost captured the Millennium Falcon, the original script for the film featured a scene where the Falcon was captured by the cruiser but it was ultimately cut from the final version.