Original Lando Showrunner “Grieving” Over Canceled Star Wars Disney+ Series

Former Lando showrunner, Justin Simien, is still “grieving” over his canceled Star Wars Disney+ series. The Haunted Mansion director recently discussed with Collider the process of moving on and his upcoming Hollywood Black documentary series. Simien is clearly broken up about how the Lando project was shelved and how he was replaced by Donald Glover.

“It was pretty developed. Yeah, there was a Bible, there was concept art, there were scripts, but it just wasn’t meant to be,” he revealed. “I get over it. I’m in therapy a lot.” Simien was supposed to handle a major Disney+ show centered around Lando Calrissian. It’s even more heart-wrenching to know that so much work had already been done on the project, and now it may never see the light of day.

“For me, the answer is that you have to really face it. It is true grief. I’ve never had a child; I’ve never lost a child, but it’s what I imagine that pain might be like,” Simien shared. “You pour so much of your heart and soul into something, but ultimately, you don’t have control over whether it lives or dies, and it is a true grieving process.”

“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,” Simien added. “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.”

Adding to this difficult moment is the fact that Simien found out about his departure through the same media reports that fans saw. Lando had been announced a long time ago, but when news and updates stopped, some fans started suspecting that something wasn’t right. The director told TheWrap he was blindsided by the chain of events. Despite everything, he still loves Star Wars and remains on good terms with Donald Glover. He was just surprised by how it all unfolded.

“It was the first time I had gotten any official confirmation at all about what was happening with [Lando],” Simien explained when asked about the timeline. “You’d certainly, like, hear rumors. It’s a small town. Donald Glover and I have a lot of mutual friends. So I had some idea of possibilities of what might be happening and why we haven’t heard from anybody.”

He added, “The good news is that I’m a huge fan — truly, genuinely of Donald Glover, and particularly the work that him and his brother do. So I’m also happy to just be a fan and watch it and sort of get to experience it the way an audience would, because it’s certainly what I wanted to see when I said yes to the project.”

Do you think he should have gotten a shot at this property?

Source: ComicBook, Collider, TheWrap