For anyone who hasn’t heard by now, directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller were unceremoniously dumped off of the Han Solo Star Wars spinoff project, with Ron Howard announced as a replacement with roughly four weeks of production left to go.
It’s a touchy situation that dips into the territory of artistic freedom, and everyone on the Internet seems to have an opinion about it. This includes Marvel Cinematic Universe head Kevin Feige and Spider-Man: Homecoming director Jon Watts. Naturally, they both have different but equally respectable perspectives considering that their roles in the cinematic universe are much different.
Feige empathizes with Kathleen Kennedy, stating that: “Kathy’s an unbelievable inspiration over the past few years that I’ve been lucky enough to get to know her. All the movies she’s made became the reason that I wanted to make moves. Being on the inside of any movie you understand. You’ve got to oversee the whole thing and take care of the vision of the overarching film. I would trust Kathy with any of the decisions she has to make, because she’s been making them amazingly for 30-plus years. That’s almost always what it is. Sometimes for the press that doesn’t seem like enough. But when you’re making a movie that requires creative decisions to be made every minute of every hour of every day, that’s what it comes down to.”
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Jon Watts was apprehensive to take sides, adding: “I can only talk about my specific experience — I have no idea what happened on that [Han Solo] movie. If anything, I was less worried about someone kicking me off the movie as the camera crew coming out from behind the scenes and revealing this was all an elaborate prank! That would make more sense to me than the fact that I was in charge of this huge movie. I tried to be as upfront and transparent as possible from the beginning about how I saw the movie, and what I was trying to do so there would be no miscommunication along the way. If you feel like you can still see some sort of semblance of my style or personality in the movie, then that’s good.”
Han Solo stars Alden Ehrenreich (Hail, Caesar!) as the famous smuggler, Donald Glover (Atlanta) as Lando Calrissian, Woody Harrelson (War for the Planet of the Apes) as Beckett (Solo’s mentor), Joonas Suotamo as Chewbacca and Phoebe Waller-Bridge (Fleabag), Emilia Clarke (Game of Thrones), Thandie Newton (Westworld), Ian Kenny (Sing Street) and Michael K. Williams (The Night Of) in as-yet-unrevealed roles. It is set for release on May 25th 2018.
Originally published June 27, 2017. Updated April 16, 2018.
