So the whole production SOLO: A STAR WARS STORY has been a real mess, huh? First it gets announced, and people are lukewarm to it…until they hire Chris Miller and Phil Lord as the directors, who took THE LEGO MOVIE and 21 JUMP STREET and made them into legitimately great films. Hey, maybe this movie has a chance after all! Hell, even the cast was exciting, with Alden Ehrenreich (hot off the success of HAIL! CAESAR) and Donald Glover playing the younger versions of Han Solo and Lando Calrissian, respectively.
Then, with only a few weeks left of principle photography, Lord and Miller get fired, causing a ripple among the fanbase. The subsequent hiring of Ron Howard was met with a resounding "meh". However, once being hired, Ron Howard assured everyone that what Lord and Miller filmed was "mostly useable", so the assumption was he'd just come in and play clean up. However, according to a report from inside sources on The Resistance Broadcast, it seems as much as 80% was reshot by Howard, at twice the price.
Now, I'm of two minds about this. On the one hand, you don't want a Frankenstein monster that merges two disparate sensibilities together (like Paul Schrader and Renny Harlin doing the EXORCIST prequel). On the other, I would've liked to have seen Miller and Lord's vision, even if it was diluted. I guess we'll never know what their film would've looked like at this point. Let's just hope this is RUSH Ron Howard at the helm, and not THE DA VINCI CODE Ron Howard.
Meanwhile, SOLO: A STAR WARS STORY is still set to fly into theaters May 25th, 2018, though with the extent of the reshoots, it may be pushed back. We'll keep you updated either way.