During a Summer season of underperforming blockbusters, surprise smashes, and the continuing domination of Wonder Woman, the news that directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, best known for The Lego Movie and the Jump Street series, had been let go from the Han Solo spin-off became arguably the biggest scandal of the film industry so far. While news had swirled around the Star Wars universe and potential creative battles since Lucasfilm became a subsidiary of Disney, revitalizing the franchise for a new age, few could imagine that the studio would go so far as to sack its chosen directors, especially with only three weeks of initial shooting left to complete.

Ron Howard, the Oscar-winning director behind Splash and the Robert Langdon trilogy, has been hired as the official replacement for the project. There have been multiple reports surrounding Lord and Miller's exit, many questions are still left unanswered over their ultimate fate, why they were fired, and what this means for the future of the franchise.

The chances are that it'll be decades before we get solid answers, and even then it won't come directly from Disney or Lucasfilm themselves. The initial statements offered by both directors and Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy were expectedly polite and recycled the inevitable “creative differences” excuse, which is par for the course for such occasions. The report from Variety on the issue emphasizes this as the key driving force, with Miller and Lord allegedly surprised to find they would not be given the creative freedom they were previously used to. The piece also explained the alleged conflicts between Kennedy and the directors, described as "a culture clash from day one", as well as a troubled working relationship with screenwriter and executive producer Lawrence Kasdan. While Lord and Miller were said to be keen on giving the Han Solo character a more tongue-in-cheek sensibility, in line with their savvy self-aware genre pastiches in 21 Jump Street and The Lego Movie, that vision did not gel with Kasdan, one of the defining creative forces in the original Star Wars trilogy.

Kathleen Kennedy gives a speech after being announced as LucasFilm chief

If that is indeed the case, and it’s easy to see why Kennedy and Kasdan would want to keep such a tight grip on this priceless franchise, it does raise the question as to why Miller and Lord were hired in the first place. If a more serious tone, akin to a “heist or Western type feel” as Kennedy desired, was the ultimate aim, then why bring on the duo best known for comedy? There is a solid chance that Lucasfilm imagined they’d have more control over the directors than they subsequently did, which would be a surprise to Lord and Miller, who have worked in the industry long enough to have attained a degree of freedom. This isn’t like Colin Trevorrow being hired for Jurassic World after one indie movie or myriad directors who seem to get picked up for a nine-figure tentpole project after making a splash with their tiny debut: Those directors can be kept on a short leash and are unlikely to try and infuse their own distinct styles into the project. Lord and Miller have already made four movies, with a combined international gross of over $700m, and that doesn’t even include their many years of success in directing, writing and producing television, such as Brooklyn Nine-Nine and The Last Man on Earth. They’re well beyond needing to toe the company line.

Star Wars was defined by its uniqueness as one man’s vision at a time when popcorn fodder was run of the mill storytelling. That made George Lucas a wildly influential figure, helping to define generations of sci-fi and modern blockbusters, so it’s easy to see the appeal for Kennedy and Lucasfilm to give the franchise over to bright young things and continue Lucas’s legacy. Of course, that was 40 years ago and a lot less was riding on that first film’s success compared to the multi-billion dollar icon of cinema it has become. Star Wars is certainly something that could benefit from a little experimentation – at this point, it’s essentially review-proof and guaranteed to bring in more money than most studios could ever dream of – but on the flipside, it’s the age-old adage of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. Clearly, Kennedy and Lucasfilm don’t think the formula is in need of a shake-up.

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They Aren't The First Directors to Leave a Project

Firing your directors midway through shooting is a PR disaster that Kennedy and company knew would be unavoidable, so for them to make this call suggests a major conflict with the Han Solo team. This is also something familiar to them. Rumors of the Rogue One troubles surrounded the project from an early stage and continued once Tony Gilroy took on the major work of reshoots, and an alleged script overhaul, from director Gareth Edwards (Godzilla). Sources claimed the original cut was too dark and strayed from Lucasfilm’s original vision. While the final movie is a decent affair, it also bears the marks of dueling creative visions, feeling frequently disjointed and incomplete. Unlike Lord and Miller, Edwards at least got to finish initial shooting before the reshoots came in (the Han Solo project has scheduled reshoots for later in the Summer, which Howard will helm). Perhaps this was a risk Lucasfilm just wasn't willing to take.

While it’s uncommon for directors to be removed from a project mid-way through filming (the “creative differences” excuse usually comes before shooting even starts), it’s not unheard of. The Wizard of Oz, now widely regarded as one of the best films ever made, went through no fewer than four directors from beginning to end: Richard Thorpe spent 10 days shooting before leaving after the first actor playing the Tin Man fell seriously ill from the makeup required for the role; he was replaced by George Cukor for a brief period, and then Victor Fleming completed the majority of the work (he is cited as the only director of the film in the credits, and it wasn't until his death in 1949 that King Vidor, another major director at MGM Studios at the time, revealed he had been assigned to film the sepia-toned beginning and end of the film). The reason Fleming left that production was because he had already been assigned to take over directing Gone with the Wind after Cukor was sacked by producer David O. Selznick, and even then that production was so infamously tough that Sam Wood had to be called in to take over from Fleming after a bout of exhaustion (that didn’t stop Fleming from winning the Best Director Oscar).

Phil Lord and Chris Miller directing 22 Jump Street

Disney and Pixar alone have been notably merciless in canning a director or an entire project if things seemed to be going off-course. Jan Pinkava was fired from his pet project Ratatouille after Pixar feared his vision was too esoteric for a wider audience (Brad Bird, who overhauled the entire project in about 18 months, led the film to commercial and critical success). Brenda Chapman had been set to become the first woman to lead direction on a Pixar project with The Bear and the Bow, her self-described "feminist fairy tale" inspired by her relationship with her daughter. A year before it was set to premiere, Disney removed her from the project and, under Mark Andrews, the film became broader and still bears the mark of a team trying to piece together something from a box of pieces that don't quite fit. Chapman kept a director credit, and took home an Oscar for what's now best known as Brave, but it's a similar situation to Rogue One wherein a creative vision clashed with a business’s necessity to appeal to its target demographics.

With the Han Solo project set to finish initial shooting soon, now under the banner of Ron Howard, questions remain as to where Lucasfilm wish to take their franchise, and how the visions of a new generation can or should fit into that. If Kennedy and the studio wish to stick to the status quo and use the model that’s worked so well for them, that’s a smart business decision that will always pay out – if Star Wars fans can survive the prequels, they can survive anything – but it’s also a little sad to imagine a world where the most iconic series of cinema of the past 50 years has no desire to experiment or deviate from the expected, especially since this new age of expanded universes and wannabe franchises seem hellbent on using the exact same mold. Directing a Star Wars film may still be the ultimate dream for many film-makers, but following the fate of Lord and Miller, many more daring directors may think twice.

NEXT: WILL RON HOWARD SAVE HAN SOLO?

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