Due to directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller’s “creative differences” (apparently including creative differences about socks) with LucasFilms’ Kathleen Kennedy and executive producer Lawrence Kasdan, the pair who made The Lego Movie were fired this week from the upcoming Han Solo spinoff/prequel film project. As Flavorwire noted yesterday, filming on the project was apparently nearly complete, having begun 4.5 months ago.
That said, there’s seemingly still a quarter of the film left to shoot, and then all of post production — and so LucasFilms, in commenting on the firing, also mentioned that they’d soon be announcing another director. Reports yesterday claimed Ron Howard was a name that was being considered to take the position, and now The Hollywood Reporter says that Howard has officially been tapped for the role.
According to THR‘s sources, filming will continue on July 10, after Howard meets with actors (Alden Ehrenreich, Donald Glover, Woody Harrelson, Emilia Clarke, Thandie Newton and Phoebe Waller-Bridge are among the leads) to presumably deliver motivating words about the turmoil-stricken project.
Incidentally, long ago, in a galaxy far, far away, Ron Howard was actually approached by George Lucas to direct The Phantom Menace. Perhaps if he had signed on to that project, it wouldn’t have been such a disaster. But hey, at least those are there, serving as a qualitative nadir against which any new Star Wars film cobbled together by multiple directors can look like a profound work of art.