Fans of Star Wars and Donald Glover (Community, Atlanta) alike can mourn the loss of their dream spinoff. According to Deadline, Justin Simien (Dear White People, Bad Hair), slated to direct the Lando spinoff Star Wars series starring Glover, announced that the series will not be happening. The announcement came during discussion with Collider about a new MGM+ docuseries titled Hollywood Black, which Simien was promoting. The series examines representation and race in Hollywood and is based on the book by scholar Donald Bogle (Lena Horne: Goddess Reclaimed, Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, And Bucks: An Interpretive History of Black Americans in Film).
The series Lando had been announced for quite some time, dating back to 2020. Fans were hyped up after the widespread positive feedback on Glover’s casting as Lando Calrissian in the Star Wars spinoff film, Solo: A Star Wars Story in 2018. After the film was brought up during the interview geared toward it, people just wanted to know… where is this thing?
According to Deadline, after being asked, Simein had to deliver the news that the series was no more. But, he did reveal that there was work being done on the show and that it was not just lying dormant with nobody working on it.
“It was pretty developed,” he said when asked what work had been done via Deadline. “There was a Bible. There was concept art. There were scripts. But it just wasn’t meant to be.”
He also explained that he is quite sad that the project never continued. Deadline reports he equated his feelings to those of mourning and grief.
“For me, it has to be done pretty straight on. Like, ‘I am in grief. I do not feel good.’ I have to let myself feel those feelings. There’s so much that I experience that I get to keep forever and take into the next project. I can’t obviously take the storyline or the IP or the characters, but there’s so much more that I got, as a maker, and that’s mine. Sorry, it’s too late, you can’t take that part back,” he told Collider.
There is no word on how exactly Lando fell through and did not come to fruition.