Donald Glover to Write Lando Series with his Brother
Remember Lando, the Lando Calrissian show Lucasfilm has been planning? Me neither, but it’s in the news again because, in a shocking development you’d never expect on a Lucasfilm project, the series’ writer, Justin Simien, has been replaced. According to an exclusive from Above the Line, Donald Glover (who played Lando in Solo: A Star Wars Story, and presumably will again on the show) and his brother Stephen are taking over for Simien, having delivered a pitch that has Lucasfilm “excited.” My assumption was that Simien was let go when the box office forecast for his upcoming film Haunted Mansion spelled doom for Disney’s latest remake (or is it a “reimagining,” as if it makes a difference?), but that’s not the case. Above the Line says that Simien actually left a year ago to focus on Haunted Mansion, and the Glover brothers have been secretly working on it until the beginning of the writers’ strike. This also gives some perspective to Donald Glover’s joke about incurring Kathleen Kennedy’s wrath if he said more about Lando in a GQ article a few months ago.
Considering how Haunted Mansion is projected to perform this weekend, I don’t imagine anyone at Disney is broken up about losing Justin Simien on Lando. And I don’t think I’ve seen anything Donald Glover and his brother have written, so I don’t know if this is a positive development. But, really, who cares? Does anyone want a Lando Calrissian TV show starring the guy who played him in that awful-looking Han Solo prequel? (I say “awful-looking” because I never saw it; I’m not interested in watching someone other than Harrison Ford play Han Solo or learning where Han got his name, his gun, and probably his belt buckle.) Even if I were inclined to give it a chance, the track record of the Disney+ Star Wars shows – and their other shows – is abysmal; even The Mandalorian, which I enjoyed for a while, dropped off a cliff. And isn’t Disney supposed to be tightening its belt, according to super-serious businessman Bob Iger? Is throwing money at a spinoff of a movie nobody seems to have liked an example of that? Or could this maybe fall by the wayside if the writers’ and actors’ strikes go on long enough? If Disney does go ahead with Lando, the best I’m hoping for is some YouTube videos critiquing Lando’s new relationship with a kitchen appliance or something. (My money’s on a blender; then, Disney gets to explore Lando’s pansexuality while castrating him.)
