Phil Lord

Getting fired from the Han Solo spinoff wasn’t the first time Phil Lord and Chris Miller experienced creative heartbreak. Over the weekend, the filmmaking duo appeared at the Vulture Festival for a panel dedicated to their tragically short-lived series Clone High. During the Q&A, talk inevitably turned to Lord and Miller’s other, more recent career hiccup, with the pair finally — and gracefully — breaking their silence on the departure from the Star Wars universe.

Apparently, Ron Howard’s Han Solo movie kept a lot of Phil Lord and Chris Miller’s original footage, according to ‘Star Wars’ star Thandie Newton.

Phil Lord and Chris Miller have signed on to direct ‘Artemis,’ the upcoming sci-fi novel from Andy Weir.

The LEGO Movie revealed itself as a meta-exploration into the mind of a child, and all the delightful adventures and characters found therein. For their next trick, co-directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller are going even further, doubling up on their storytelling style to tell the tale from two entirely different perspectives.

Phil Lord and Chris Miller assembled a dream team to create their Han Solo spinoff Star Wars anthology film. The cast is incredible: Donald Glover, Woody Harrelson, Emilia Clarke, and Alden Ehrenreich as the young Solo. The screenplay was by longtime Star Wars creative force Lawrence Kasdan and his son Jon. The cinematographer was Bradford Young, whose quickly proven himself as one of the most talented young D.P.s in the business with films like Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, Selma, and Arrival. If you’re gonna make a Han Solo movie, these sure seem like the men and women you want to do it with.

Woody Harrelson is a pretty chill dude, so when he was recently asked about Ron Howard replacing Phil Lord and Chris Miller on the Han Solo spinoff, his response wasn’t particularly surprising: “I wouldn’t worry.” Of course he wouldn’t worry; he’s Woody Harrelson, a man who wears flip flops to film premieres and calls fellow mellow dude Matthew McConaughey his BFF.

If you’ve made use of the internet in the past week, then you may very well be aware of a recent personnel change-up on the set of the gestating Han Solo spinoff film. Original directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller are out, Ron Howard’s in, but as with most showbiz behind-the-scenes drama, the details have been kept under wraps. That is, until The Hollywood Reporter ran an illuminating new item this morning, getting the dish on what really drove the two filmmakers away from this project. The catch-all code word of “creative differences” does not even come close to doing justice to the antipathy between the Lord-Miller brain trust and Lucasfilm.

And now, the story of a big studio movie that lost its creative team, and the one director who had no choice but to keep it all together — it’s Han Solo’s re-hiring process.

We’re still reeling from the news that Phil Lord and Chris Miller have walked off (or been fired from) the Han Solo spinoff Star Wars anthology film, but this movie has a release date in less than a year, and it is coming to theaters, with Lord/Miller or not. Although the news that the directing duo was not finishing Han Solo was announced today, the search for a replacement was already underway. Deadline says that Lucasfilm’s top pick at the moment is Ron Howard, the Oscar-winning filmmaker of movies like Apollo 13, A Beautiful Mind, and The Da Vinci Code:

Well, that was unexpected. Lucasfilm has just announced that Phil Lord and Christopher Miller are no longer at the helm of Star Wars’ Han Solo spinoff movie, due to, you guessed it, that perennial Hollywood scourge: creative differences.