It was way back in December 2020 when Lucasfilm announced that Justin Simien would serve as showrunner on a Lando TV series starring Solo: A Star Wars Story's Donald Glover.
Unfortunately, no solid news about the project followed, and Glover has frequently danced around the question of whether he's going to reprise the role made famous by Billy Dee Willaims. As for Simien, the series was repeatedly brought up in interviews when he was doing the rounds to promote Disney's Haunted Mansion movie.
Admitting that he'd heard nothing about the series since it was announced, the filmmaker said the studio told him they had to figure out everyone's availability. However, shortly after those comments were covered by news sites, we learned Glover and his brother Stephen would instead be writing the show following Simien's exit.
The showrunner learned of his firing on social media, a shame when there were surely better ways to handle a change in direction for the spin-off.
Stephen, who was Atlanta's Head Story Editor, was recently asked where things stand with Lando and confirmed reports about him and Donald collaborating on the project. However, what was once a Disney+ TV series is now set to be a movie!
"It's not even a show...the idea right now is to do a movie," he confirms in the video below. "That's the thing, right now because of the strike, it's kind of like 'telephone.'"
We're not surprised Lucasfilm has changed course. Disney CEO Bob Iger has expressed a desire to bring Star Wars back to theaters and spend less on streaming. A big screen spin-off revolving around one of the franchise's most popular supporting characters obviously stands a solid chance of being a box office hit...right?
Solo, however, was released in North America on May 25, 2018, and received generally positive reviews from critics, which praised the cast (particularly Ehrenreich and Glover), visuals, score, and action sequences.
On the other hand, there were those who criticised the storyline and screenplay, and it ultimately became the first live-action Star Wars film to be a box office bomb, only grossing $393.2 million worldwide. With any luck, a Lando movie can give the franchise a second chance...and resolve that big Maul tease.