Back before we saw the Star Wars franchise’s completely avoidable demise, the brand had confidently hashed out its road map, preparing several shows and movies that we were supposed to see in the future – one of those shows was “Lando,” an offshoot series based on the mildly-successful “Solo: A Star Wars Story.”
Fast forward a couple of years later, and it was announced that plans for the series had been scrapped, as it will instead be a movie. Since then, radio silence. However, Lando showrunner Justin Simien confirmed last Friday that the “Lando” story will not be moving forward at all.
During an interview with Collider about Simien’s new docuseries, “Hollywood Black,” the famous director/screenwriter stated and even vented about the project’s abrupt cancellation. He went on record saying that the project was well into its development cycle when it received the boot, stating that “there was a Bible, there was concept art, there were scripts, but it just wasn’t meant to be.”
In this interview, he admitted that he is in grief about the cancelled project. Despite this, he acknowledges that there’s nothing that he can do about it, and only chooses to grow from the experience.
The much-anticipated series was first announced back in 2020. It was from an era of Star Wars defined by an ever-increasing number of backstory spinoffs and side stories that would inevitably hype up the next Star Wars instalment. “Lando” was set to bring back Donald Glover as the smooth-talking smuggler who was a breakout star of the “Solo” film.
Though Disney focuses on expanding the cinematic universe to the small screen, the brand has become rather infamous for shelving and shutting down many Star Wars projects as fast, if not faster, than they could take off. This led many to conclude that it was only a matter of time that the Lando project would get the chop, while others argued that it wouldn’t be the case due to the amount of effort and money poured into the project.
Fans became even more excited when it was announced that Glover and his brother, Stephen, the showrunner on “Atlanta” and the producer of “Mr. and Mrs. Smith,” would step in as co-writers. As to why Disney+ decided to axe the project is still unclear, and we might never know why, as the abrupt nature of the cancellation left everyone in the dark.
Source: Collider, Entertainment Weekly
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