When Han Solo pilots the Millennium Falcon for the first time in Solo, there won’t be just one film director that made it happen, there will be three. Back in June of 2017, popular directors of The Lego Movie — Chris Miller and Phil Lord — were fired by Lucasfilm from the Han Solo movie over creative differences. And now, Lucasfilm is clarifying exactly why. Basically, in Lord and Miller’s version of Star Wars, there was too much improv.
On Friday, Entertainment Weekly continued its coverage of Solo: A Star Wars Story and revealed what Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy directly said about the controversial shake-up. And it seems like too much joking around was slowing down the process.
Here’s the quote from Kennedy on EW.
“I think these guys are hilarious, but they come from a background of animation and sketch comedy and when you are making these movies you can do that and there’s plenty of room for improvisation, we do that all the time, but it has to be inside of a highly structured process or you can’t get the work done and you can’t move the armies of people to anticipate and have things ready. So, it literally came down to process. Just getting it done.”
Kennedy also told EW that there wasn’t “anything I can really add,” to that statement, which could imply there was more to the switch than simply the fact that Miller and Lord didn’t hit deadlines. At a cursory glance, their replacement, Ron Howard, is the safe choice to direct the movie, and he also has a long history with Lucasfilm, including directing the fantasy epic Willow in 1988.
Lucas and Howard on the set of 'Willow.'
So, Howard gets sci-fi and fantasy and loves Star Wars. Will his Han Solo flick be better than whatever vision Miller and Lord had for the film? Whatever the answer is, one thing is probably true: people will say Miller and Lord’s version of Solo would have been funnier.
