Lando Writer Offers Candid Update on Star Wars Series: ‘I Have No Idea What’s Going On With It’
We now have a status update on Disney+’s Lando Calrissian series… but it’s not exactly an encouraging one.
Two-and-a-half years after Lando officially went into early development at the streamer, writer Justin Simien shared that he has “no idea what’s going on” with the potential series at present.
“I certainly poured my heart and spent a lot of time working with them to put together a really great show,” Simien told The Direct. “It feels like everybody loves it. And, you know, I was told we had to put a pause on it because of scheduling, and the next update I got [was in 2020], some years ago. So I don’t know, I have no idea what’s going on with it.” (TVLine has reached out to Disney+ and Lucasfilm for comment.)
Simien is referring to an announcement made at Disney’s Investor Day in December 2020, when a prequel “event series” centered on the iconic Star Wars con artist was revealed to officially be in the works. Then, at this year’s Star Wars Celebration in April, Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy said the project was “still happening,” but updates on the series have otherwise been infrequent.
In fact, other than its focus on “the galaxy’s favorite scoundrel,” little is known about Lando‘s plot, its place in the Star Wars timeline or who will star as the iconic character. Atlanta star Donald Glover, who appeared as a young Lando in the 2018 film Solo: A Star Wars Story, has yet to be formally announced as the headliner, but he seemed to confirm his involvement during a March 2022 visit to Jimmy Kimmel Live.
“Am I [working on the series]?” he responded to Kimmel’s question with a grin. “No, yeah, I have a lot of things [going on]…. I have like a ton of stuff I’ve been working on.”
Then, in April of this year, Glover said, “We’re talking about it,” before adding, “That’s as much as I can say without Kathleen Kennedy hunting me down.”
Billy Dee Williams, of course, originated the role of Lando in 1980’s Empire Strikes Back (before returning in 1983’s Return of the Jedi and 2019’s Rise of Skywalker).
And it’s stuff like this that led to the strikes. Almost 3 years after announcing and the writers and actors have no idea where this and many, many projects like this stand. The studios want to make money so they put all these projects into development and limbo at the same time. Marvel and Disney are the biggest proponents of this. They over promise constantly thinking that trends and interests will stay the same. Half of these projects won’t see the light of day because the markets and audiences aren’t there. It’s completely unfair to every person involved. Especially the writers and actors who sometimes are in contracts that prevent them taking other roles and jobs and many of them stay in good faith as they were promised a straight to go series.
Here’s an idea: Don’t do it! It’s yet another Creative Dead-End Project that won’t go anywhere for Lando other than his appearance in Star Wars Rebels and Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back. Stop trying to canonitemize every single moment of every character. Leave some things to fan’s imaginations.
For some reason…and apologies for leaving it in the comments, I wasn’t sure where else to do so. But I clicked on a 9-1-1 article but it took me here.
Disney needs to sell star wars to someone who will make good content, it’s not working and it never will just respect the fans and sell already.
While I would love a Lando prequel series, it needs to have a reason to exist. A lot of the praise Andor gets from the fans isn’t just because of the more adult tone, but also because it’s telling a story that genuinely adds to the characters and mythos. It has a reason to exist. That is the type of story Disney and Lucasfilm need to concentrate on, if they’re going to use established characters.