Star Wars: Lando Disney+ series to be written by Donald and Stephen Glover
One of the few bright spots in Solo: A Star Wars Story was Donald Glover's depiction of a younger Lando Calrissian. Despite the movie being a box office bomb that caused Disney to completely rethink how it tells stories about already-existing characters, Lucasfilm announced back in 2020 plans for a Lando Calrissian-led "event series" for Disney+.
The series was to be directed by Dear White People creator Justin Simien and would feature the return of Donald Glover as young Lando. The project was in its early stages when it was announced in December 2020, with few updates coming since then. But this week, there was a major shake-up, and some fans will probably be happy with the news.
The galaxy’s favorite scoundrel, Lando Calrissian, will return in Lando, a brand-new event series for @DisneyPlus. Justin Simien (@JSim07) is in the early stages of developing the project.
— Star Wars (@starwars) December 10, 2020
It was confirmed by Variety that Justin Simien is no longer attached to the project. Instead, brothers Donald and Stephen Glover will now be writing the series.
Simien most recently directed Disney's Haunted Mansion movie, a live-action adaptation of the popular Disney theme park attraction. The film arrives in theaters July 28. Reviews for the film are largely negative as it sits at just a 40% on Rotten Tomatoes, but that doesn't appear to have been the motivating factor behind the Glover brothers taking over as writers on the series as the deal was reportedly reached prior to the writers' strike beginning on May 2.
Lando Calrissian was portrayed by Billy Dee Williams in the original Star Wars trilogy as well as in the 2019 sequel The Rise of Skywalker. The character has been greatly expanded upon in future novels, comic books and video games and has since become a fan-favorite. Glover's portrayal of a young Lando in Solo: A Star Wars Story was well received and one of the film's biggest highlights.
Donald Glover isn't only a talented actor, having starred in Community and Atlanta; but, he's also a writer, director and producer as well. He was hired at age 23 by Tina Fey as a writer for 30 Rock and has worked as numerous other projects as well. If you've seen any of Glover's previous work, then odds are you're excited about the prospect of him writing the Lando series. As a comedian, actor, rapper and writer, he has a wide-range of talent he can bring to the script of the upcoming series.