No matter how Solo: A Star Wars Story eventually turns out, there’ll always be the nagging question of what it could have been.
After all, with weeks to go before production was scheduled to conclude, directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller were abruptly fired and replaced with Ron Howard, who’s about as safe a choice of a director as you can get. Given that Lord and Miller have achieved success after success with a very distinctive comedic style, it was natural to wonder just what the hell was going through Disney and Lucasfilm’s heads. After all, they must have known what they were getting into when they hired them, right? Well, apparently not, as Kathleen Kennedy revealed in an interview earlier this week
What she didn’t reveal, though, and what we still don’t know, is just how much of Solo Howard actually helmed. In fact, when EW pressed the director himself on the matter, he played coy.
Using a quote from the titular hero to avoid the question, here’s what Howard said:
“As Han says, ‘Don’t tell me the percentages.’ Never tell me the percentages. I don’t really want to explain it. I don’t really want to be specific about that because, again, I don’t even want that to matter to fans. I could understand why you’d ask, and some might even be curious, but look, everybody who has been involved in this has done nothing but love what this movie could be, and that’s been the vibe around it. I think audiences are gonna feel that love and excitement.”
Though the actual line is “Never tell me the odds,” Howard’s point is clear. Both he and the studio would rather not have people go into the film focusing on who’s responsible for what. They want audiences to just sit down, watch it, and enjoy it in its current state, without trying to figure out who contributed which sections.
Besides, we’ve already heard from the director that the “fingerprints” of Phil Lord and Chris Miller are all over the pic, which was evident in the first trailer. So, it stands to reason then that they probably kept a lot of the duo’s footage. Then again, there’ve also been unconfirmed reports that Howard reshot up to 80% of the film, so who knows?
Either way, with Solo: A Star Wars Story now adorning the cover, Entertainment Weekly will likely continue to roll out various scraps of intel over the coming days. And you can bet that we’ll be keeping a close eye on the Anthology flick as it begins to coalesce, particularly now that Disney is pushing ahead with a fifth Star Wars trilogy (Rian Johnson is in charge of the fourth) and multiple TV series set in that famous, distant galaxy.
