The Lando Star Wars TV show’s showrunner reveals he learned about about its demise by reading the news, just like the rest of us.
At this point, even the most ardent of Star Wars fans are struggling to find the positives in Disney’s decade-long stewardship of the storied franchise. Years of mismanagement, botched projects and cancellations have left the live action portion of Star Wars in something of a messy state, with quality releases (such as 2022’s Andor) being few and far between.
When it comes to Star Wars feature films, both Lucasfilm and Disney have especially struggled, but there have been bright spots here and there. One such highlight was Donald Glover’s portrayal of the charming rogue Lando Calrissian in the 2018 prequel film, Solo: A Star Wars Story.
Glover’s performance was received warmly, and taking on the character of Han Solo was no easy job, considering he was portraying a younger version of a beloved and established role. Still, a series was duly commissioned for release on Disney+.
Despite being at an advanced stage of pre-production, the project is no more though, and it joins the increasingly high pile of Star Wars projects to be scrapped by Lucasfilm.
Writer/director, Justin Simien has talked about the demise of the project, saying, “it was pretty developed,” he told Collider. “Yeah, there was a Bible, there was concept art, there were scripts, but it just wasn’t meant to be.”
The news was difficult to deal with for Simien, given how far and how long (the project was announced some four years ago) Lando had been in development.
“I am in grief,” he added. “I do not feel good. I have to let myself feel those feelings. There’s so much that I experience that I get to keep forever and take into the next project. I can’t obviously take the storyline or the IP or the characters, but there’s so much more that I got, as a maker, and that’s mine”.
Worse still, Simien had to find out about the project’s demise in the Hollywood trades, stating: “It became clear. They probably won’t want me to say this, but I knew it was official when I read it in the trades. But the writing was super on the wall.”
On the wall or not, that shows a serious lack of class from Lucasfilm. If you want to read about the past decade of gaffes by the company when it comes to Star Wars, be our guest.
Simien is moving on to Star Trek and will be tackling the franchise’s first ever live action comedy. Hopefully he’ll be treated better over there. As for Star Wars, the next live action film is slated to be The Mandalorian & Grogu, which is set for a 2026 release.
