In a , directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller have announced their departure from the still-untitled young Han Solo entry in the Star Wars anthology film series. What makes this exit extra wild and unexpected is that it comes towards the end of the shoot. Production began back in February and was originally scheduled to finish up in three weeks time. At this time, Lucasfilm has not yet announced a replacement director.
“Phil Lord and Christopher Miller are talented filmmakers who have assembled an incredible cast and crew, but it’s become clear that we had different creative visions on this film, and we’ve decided to part ways. A new director will be announced soon,” Kathleen Kennedy, president of Lucasfilm, said Tuesday in a statement.
“Unfortunately, our vision and process weren’t aligned with our partners on this project,” a statement from Lord and Miller read. “We normally aren’t fans of the phrase ‘creative differences’ but for once this cliché is true. We are really proud of the amazing and world-class work of our cast and crew.”
The old “creative differences”. That can mean a number of things during pre-production, but the possibilities dwindle when you’re this far into a shoot. Basically, either the duo and Lucasfilm were butting heads so much that they decided to walk, the shoot was an unwieldly mess resulting in footage that Lucasfilm wasn’t happy with, or some combination of the two. Whatever the case may be, this is a massive turn of events that will have some major consequences for the directors, Lucasfilm, and the film itself.
As I stated about, the film was still a month away from completion, plus a scheduled round of additional photography was slated for later in the summer. It will be interesting to see if they truck on with the shoot (after a brief hiatus) or if they break and simply extend the already-planned reshoot schedule later this year. If the latter happen, expect rewrites to occur.
Beyond the obvious question of “What really happened?!?”, the big queries now are “Who does Lucasfilm get to finish the Han Solo film?” and “Will it retain its May 2018 release date?”. No matter the answers, a dark cloud now hangs over a film that many were hoping would turn out to be one of the better Star Wars movies. What a mess.
