Original Plans for Donald Glover’s Lando Teased by Fired Star Wars Director
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Solo: A Star Wars Story co-director Phil Lord, who was infamously fired from the production part-way through, has teased his original plans for Donald Glover’s Lando Calrissian before the movie was put through rewrites and reshoots. Responding on social media to a fan who posted the message “John Boyega is doing what Star Wars wouldn’t. For my @Polygon debut, I explain how Star Wars could’ve adapted the tradition of Black resistance to make Finn into a different type of hero”, Miller simply said that “some people tried…”
While Miller does not specifically say that he is referring to Lando Calrissian, it is more than reasonable to assume that that is what he is doing. Since Lando had such a key role in Solo, it is pretty safe to assume that both Lord and Christopher Miller had plans to use the character in a very different way to what audiences ended up seeing upon the movie’s release. While details surrounding the pair’s firing from the movie are still unknown, it has been revealed the pair looked to take risks on Solo and even encouraged the cast to improvise. This led to their version of Solo straying quite far away from the original script, which had been written by Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back writer Lawrence Kasdan.
Ron Howard, who took over directing duties following Lord and Miller’s departure, shot the same script they had, making it highly likely that Lord and Miller tried to inject their own ideas into the Han Solo movie. By the sounds of it, one of these ideas was to take Lando in a different direction than what was written in the script. Unfortunately, Lord stopped short of saying how exactly they had tried to make Lando a “different type of hero”, so what those ideas might have been continues to remain a mystery.
Donald Glover’s performance as Lando was one of the clear highlights of the movie, and viewers have been asking to see more of him ever since. A fan campaign for a Solo 2 has even begun to find traction, so perhaps this is not the last we will see of these versions of the beloved Star Wars characters.
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The original comment that sparked Lord’s response made reference to John Boyega’s speech against racial injustice, which he made at a Black Lives Matter protest in the United Kingdom. Despite the actor stating that his actions could harm his Hollywood career, several prominent actors have declared their support including his Star Wars co-star Mark Hamill and Get Out director Jordan Peele.
Solo: A Star Wars Story takes audiences back to a galaxy far, far away, and introduces a younger, equally roguish Han Solo. Everyone’s favorite scruffy-looking nerf herder gets involved in a large-scale heist within the criminal underworld and meets individuals who change his life. Though the movie was fairly well received critically, Solo was a box office bomb and suffered from a lot of behind the scenes drama.
While we may never know what Lord and Miller’s plans for Lando were, hopefully this is not the last we have seen of the Donald Glover iteration of the character. This comes to us from Phil Lord’s Twitter account.